Pinckney’s humiliation was extreme. After breaking off relations with Cevallos and pledging himself to demand his passports and to leave Spain, he had been reduced to admit that his Government disavowed him; and not only was he obliged to remain at Madrid, but also to sue for permission to resume relations with Cevallos. The Spanish government good-naturedly and somewhat contemptuously permitted him to do so; and he was only distressed by the fear that Monroe might refuse to let him take part in the new negotiation, for he was with reason confident that Monroe would be obliged to follow in his own footsteps,—that the United States could save its dignity and influence only by war.
At the beginning of the new year, Jan. 2, 1805, Monroe entered Madrid to snatch Florida from the grasp of Spain and France. The negotiation fell chiefly within Jefferson’s second term, upon which it had serious results. But while Monroe, busy at Madrid with a quarrel which could lead only to disappointment or war, thus left the legation at London for eight months to take care of itself, events were occurring which warned President Jefferson that the supreme test of his principles was near at hand, and that a storm was threatening from the shores of Great Britain compared with which all other dangers were trivial.
CHAPTER XIV.
For eighteen years after 1783 William Pitt guided England through peace and war with authority almost as absolute as that of Don Carlos IV. or Napoleon himself. From him and from his country President Jefferson had much to fear and nothing to gain beyond a continuance of the good relations which President Washington, with extreme difficulty, had succeeded in establishing between the two peoples. So far as England was concerned, this understanding had been the work of Pitt and Lord Grenville, who rather imposed it on their party than accepted it as the result of any public will. The extreme perils in which England then stood inspired caution; and of this caution the treaty of 1794 was one happy result. So long as the British government remained in a cautious spirit, America was safe; but should Pitt or his successors throw off the self-imposed restraints on England’s power, America could at the utmost, even by a successful war, gain nothing materially better than a return to the arrangements of 1794.
The War of Independence, which ended in the definitive treaty of 1783, naturally left the English people in a state of irritation and disgust toward America; and the long interregnum of the Confederation, from 1783 to 1789, allowed this disgust to ripen into contempt. When at length the Constitution of 1789 restored order in the American chaos, England felt little faith in the success of the experiment. She waited for time to throw light on her interests.
This delay was natural; for American independence had shattered into fragments the commercial system of Great Britain, and powerful interests were combined to resist further concession. Before 1776 the colonies of England stretched from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, and across the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of South America, mutually supporting and strengthening each other. Jamaica and the other British islands of the West Indies drew their most necessary supplies from the Delaware and the Hudson. Boston and New York were in some respects more important to them than London itself. The timber, live-stock, and provisions which came from the neighboring continent were essential to the existence of the West Indian planters and negroes. When war cut off these supplies, famine and pestilence followed. After the peace of 1783 even the most conservative English statesmen were obliged to admit that the strictness of their old colonial system could not be maintained, and that the United States, though independent, must be admitted to some of the privileges of a British colony. The government unwillingly conceded what could not be refused, and the West Indian colonists compelled Parliament to relax the colonial system so far as to allow a restricted intercourse between their islands and the ports of the United States. The relaxation was not a favor to the United States,—it was a condition of existence to the West Indies; not a boon, but a right which the colonists claimed and an Act of Parliament defined.[226]
The right was dearly paid for. The islands might buy American timber and grain, but they were allowed to make return only in molasses and rum. Payment in sugar would have been cheaper for the colonists, and the planters wished for nothing more earnestly than to be allowed this privilege; but as often as they raised the prayer, English shipowners cried that the navigation laws were in peril, and a chorus of familiar phrases filled the air, all carrying a deep meaning to the English people. “Nursery of seamen” was one favorite expression; “Neutral frauds” another; and all agreed in assuming that at whatever cost, and by means however extravagant, the navy must be fed and strengthened. Under the cover of supporting the navy any absurdity could be defended; and in the case of the West Indian trade, the British shipowner enjoyed the right to absurdities sanctioned by a century and a half of law and custom. The freight on British sugars belonged of right to British shippers, who could not be expected to surrender of their own accord, in obedience to any laws of political economy, a property which was the source of their incomes. The colonists asked permission to refine their own sugar; but their request not only roused strong opposition from the shipowners who wanted the bulkier freight, but started the home sugar-refiners to their feet, who proved by Acts of Parliament that sugar-refining was a British and not a colonial right. The colonist then begged a reduction of the heavy duty on sugar; but English country gentlemen cried against a measure which might lead to an increase of the income-tax or the imposition of some new burden on agriculture. In this dilemma the colonists frankly said that only their weakness, not their will, prevented them from declaring themselves independent, like their neighbors at Charleston and Philadelphia.
Even when the qualified right of trade was conceded, the colonists were not satisfied; and the concession itself laid the foundation of more serious changes. From the moment that American produce was admitted to be a necessity for the colonists, it was clear that the Americans must be allowed a voice in the British system. Discussion whether the Americans had or had not a right to the colonial trade was already a long step toward revolution. One British minister after another resented the idea that the Americans had any rights in the matter; yet when they came to practical arrangements the British statesmen were obliged to concede that they were mistaken. From the necessity of the case, the Americans had rights which never could be successfully denied. Parliament struggled to prevent the rebel Americans from sharing in the advantages of the colonial system from which they had rebelled; but unreasonable as it was that the United States should be rewarded for rebellion by retaining the privileges of subjects, this was the inevitable result. Geography and Nature were stronger than Parliament and the British navy.
At first Pitt hoped that the concession to the colonists might entail no concession to the United States; while admitting a certain hiatus in the colonial system, he tried to maintain the navigation laws in their integrity. The admission of American produce into the West Indies was no doubt an infraction of the protectionist principle on which all the civilized world, except America, founded its economical ideas; but in itself it was not serious. To allow the flour, potatoes, tobacco, timber, and horses of the American continent to enter the harbors of Barbadoes and Jamaica; to allow in turn the molasses and rum of the islands to be sent directly to New York and Boston,—harmed no one, and was advantageous to all parties, so long as British ships were employed to carry on the trade. At first this was the case. The Act of Parliament allowed only British subjects, in British-built ships, to enter colonial ports with American produce. Whether the United States government would long tolerate such legislation without countervailing measures was a question which remained open for a time, while the system itself had a chance to prove its own weakness. The British shipping did not answer colonial objects. Again and again the colonists found themselves on the verge of starvation; and always in this emergency the colonial governors threw open their ports by proclamation to American shipping, while with equal regularity Parliament protected the governors by Acts of Indemnity. To this extent the navigation system suffered together with the colonial system, but in theory it was intact. Ministry, Parliament, and people clung to the navigation laws as their ark of safety; and even the colonists conceded that although they had a right to eat American wheat and potatoes, they had no right to eat those which came to them in the hold of a Marblehead schooner.
Such a principle, however convenient to Great Britain, was not suited to the interests of New England shippers. In peace their chances were comparatively few, and the chief diplomatic difficulties between European governments and the United States had their source in the American attempt to obtain legal recognition of trade which America wished to maintain with the colonies; but in war the situation changed, and more serious disputes occurred. Then the French and Spanish West Indian ports were necessarily thrown open to neutral commerce, because their own ships were driven from the ocean by the superiority of the British navy. Besides the standing controversy about the admission of American produce to British islands, the British government found itself harassed by doubts to what extent it might safely admit the Americans into the French or Spanish West Indies, and allow them to carry French property, as though their flag were competent to protect whatever was under it. Granting that an article like French sugar might be carried in a neutral vessel, there were still other articles, called contraband, which ought not to be made objects of neutral commerce; and England was obliged to define the nature of contraband. She was also forced to make free use of the right of blockade. These delicate questions were embittered by another and more serious quarrel. The European belligerents claimed the right to the military service of their subjects, and there was no doubt that their right was perfect. In pursuance of the claim they insisted upon taking their seamen from American merchant-vessels wherever met on the high seas. So far as France was concerned, the annoyance was slight; but the identity of race made the practice extremely troublesome as concerned England.