The avowed liberal opinions of Hartley raising distrust, Lord Sheffield, a supporter of the ministry, and, on trade with America, the master authority of that day for parliament, immediately sounded an alarm. "Let the ministers know," said he on the fifteenth, in the house of lords, "the country is as tenacious of the principle of the navigation act as of the principle of Magna Charta. They must not allow America to take British colonial produce to ports in Europe. They must reserve to our remaining dominions the exclusive trade to the West India islands; otherwise, the only use of them will be lost. If we permit any state to trade with our islands or to carry into this country any produce but its own, we desert the navigation act and sacrifice the marine of England. The peace is in comparison a trifling object." But there was no need of fear lest Fox should yield too much. In his instructions to Hartley, he was for taking the lion's share, as Vergennes truly said. He proposed that the manufactures of the thirteen states should as a matter of course be excluded from Great Britain, but that British manufactures should be admitted everywhere in the United States. While America was dependent, parliament had taxed importations of its produce, but British ships and manufactures entered the colonies free of duty. "The true object of the treaty in this business," so Fox enforced his plan, "is the mutual admission of ships and merchandise free from any new duty or imposition;" that is, the Americans on their side should leave the British navigation act in full force and renounce all right to establish an act of navigation of their own; should continue to pay duties in the British ports on their own produce; and receive in their own ports British produce and manufactures duty free. One subject appealed successfully to the generous side of his nature. To the earnest wish of Jay that British ships should have no right under the convention to carry into the states any slaves from any part of the world, it being the intention of the United States entirely to prohibit their importation,# Fox answered promptly: "If that be their policy, it never can be Almon, xxvi., 615. + Works of John Adams, iii., 380. Fox to Hartley, 10 April 1783. MS. competent to us to dispute with them their own regulations." * In like spirit, to formal complaints that Carleton, "in the face of the treaty, persisted in sending off negroes by hundreds," Fox made answer: "To have restored negroes whom we invited, seduced if you will, under a promise of liberty, to the tyranny and possibly to the vengeance of their former masters, would have been such an act as scarce any orders from his employers (and no such orders exist) could have induced a man of honor to execute." + The dignity and interests of the republic were safe, for they were confided to Adams, Franklin, and Jay. In America there existed as yet no system of restrictions; and congress had not power to protect shipping or establish a custom-house. The states as dependencies had been so severely and so wantonly cramped by British navigation acts, and for more than a century had so steadily resisted them, that the desire of absolute freedom of commerce had become a part of their nature. The American commissioners were very much pleased with the trade-bill of Pitt, and with the principles expressed in its preamble; the debates upon it in parliament awakened their distrust. They were ready for any event, having but the one simple and invariable policy of reciprocity. Their choice and their offer was mutual unconditional free trade; but, however narrow might be the limits which England should impose, they were resolved to insist on like for like. The British commissioner was himself in favor of the largest liberty for commerce, but he was reproved by Fox for transmitting a proposition not authorized by his instructions. A debate in the house of lords on the sixth of May revealed the rapidity with which the conviction was spreading that America had no power to adopt measures of defensive legislation. There were many who considered the United States as having no government at all, and there were some who looked for the early dissolution of the governments even of the separate states. Lord Walsingham, accordingly, proposed that the law for admitting American ships should apply not merely to the ships of the United States, but to ships belonging to any * Fox to Hartley, 10 June 1783. MS. Fox to Hartley, 9 August 1783. Hartley to Fox, 20 May 1783. MS. one of the states and to any ship or vessel belonging to any of the inhabitants thereof. He was supported by Thurlow, who said: "I have read an account which stated the government of America to be totally unsettled, and that each province seemed intent on establishing a distinct, independent, sovereign state. If this is really the case, the amendment will be highly necessary and proper."* The amendment was dropped; and the bill under discussion, in its final shape, repealed prohibitory acts made during the war, removed the formalities which attended the admission of ships from the colonies during their state of dependency, and for a limited time left the power of regulating commerce with America to the king in council. Immediately the proclamation of an order in council of the second of July confined the trade between the American states and the British West India islands to British-built ships owned and navigated "by British subjects." "Undoubtedly," wrote the king, "the Americans cannot expect nor ever will receive any favor from me."+ To an American, Fox said: "For myself, I have no objection to opening the West India trade to the Americans, but there are many parties to please."+ The blow fell heavily on America, and compelled a readjustment of its industry. Ships had been its great manufacture for exportation. For nicety of workmanship, the palm was awarded to Philadelphia, but nowhere could they be built so cheaply as at Boston. More than one third of the tonnage employed in British commerce before the war was of American construction. Britain renounced this resource. The continent and West India islands had prospered by the convenient interchange of their produce; the trade between nearest and friendliest neighbors was forbidden, till England should find out that she was waging war against a higher power than the United States; that her adversary was nature itself. Her statesmen confounded the "navigation act" and "the marine of Britain; "# the one the offspring of selfishness, the other the sublime display of the creative power of a free people. * Almon, xxviii., 180, 181. Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, ii., 442. Diplomatic Correspondence, 1783-1787, ii., 513; Fox to Hartley, 10 June 1783. MS. #Sheffield's Commerce of the American States, preface, 10. Such was the issue between the ancient nation which falsely and foolishly and mischievously believed that its superiority in commerce was due to artificial legislation, and a young people which solicited free trade. Yet thrice blessed was this assertion of monopoly by an ignorant parliament, for it went forth as a summons to the commercial and the manufacturing interests of the American states and to the self-respect and patriotism of their citizens to speak an efficient government into being. Full of faith in the rising power of America, Jay, on the seventeenth of July, wrote to Gouverneur Morris: "The present ministry are duped by an opinion of our not having union and energy sufficient to retaliate their restrictions. No time is to be lost in raising and maintaining a national spirit in America. Power to govern the confederacy as to all general purposes should be granted and exercised. In a word, everthing conducive to union and constitutional energy should be cultivated, cherished, and protected."* Two days later he wrote to William Livingston of New Jersey: "A continental, national spirit should pervade our country, and congress should be enabled, by a grant of the necessary powers, to regulate the commerce and general concerns of the confederacy." On the same day, meeting Hartley, the British envoy, Jay said to him: "The British ministry will find us like a globe—not to be overset. They wish to be the only carriers between their islands and other countries; and though they are apprized of our right to regulate our trade as we please, yet I suspect they flatter themselves that the different states possess too little of a national or continental spirit ever to agree in any one national system. I think they will find themselves mistaken." "The British ministers," so Gouverneur Morris in due time replied to Jay, "are deceived, for their conduct itself will give congress a power to retaliate their restrictions. This country has never yet been known in Europe, least of all to England, because they constantly view it through a medium of prejudice or of faction. True it is that the general government wants energy, and equally true it is that this want Sparks's Life of G. Morris, i., 258. # Jay to G. Morris, 17 July 1783. + Gouverneur Morris to Jay, 24 September 1783. Sparks's G. Morris, i., 259. VOL. VI.-4 will eventually be supplied. Do not ask the British to take off their foolish restrictions; the present regulation does us more political good than commercial mischief." * On the side of those in England who were willing to accept the doctrines of free trade, Josiah Tucker, the dean of Gloucester, remarked: "As to the future grandeur of America, and its being a rising empire, under one head, whether republican or monarchical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever was conceived even by writers of romance. The mutual antipathies and clashing interests of the Americans, their difference of governments, habitudes, and manners, indicate that they will have no centre of union and no common interest. They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever; a disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, they will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths or principalities, according to natural boundaries, by great bays of the sea, and by vast rivers, lakes, and ridges of mountains.” † The principle of trade adopted by the coalition ministry Sheffield set forth with authority in a pamphlet, which was accepted as an oracle. "There should be no treaty with the American states because they will not place England on a better footing than France and Holland, and equal rights will be enjoyed of course without a treaty. The nominal subjects of congress in the distant and boundless regions of the valley of the Mississippi will speedily imitate and multiply the examples of independence. It will not be an easy matter to bring the American states to act as a nation; they are not to be feared as such by us. The confederation does not enable congress to form more than general treaties; when treaties become necessary, they must be made with the states separately. Each state has reserved every power relative to imposts, exports, prohibitions, duties, etc., to itself. If the American states choose to send consuls, receive them and send a consul to each state. Each state will soon enter into all necessary *Gouverneur Morris to Jay, 10 January 1784. Ibid., 266, 267. Dean Tucker's Cui Bono, 1781, 117-119. Sheffield's Commerce of the American States, 183, 199, 191, 198-200. |