I see no prospect of agreeing upon any regulation of commerce here. The present Ministry are afraid of every knot of merchants. A clamor of an interested party, more than an evil to their country, is their dread. A few West India merchants, in opposition to the sense and interest of the West India planters, are endeavoring to excite an opposition to our carrying the produce of the West India Islands from those islands to Europe, even to Great Britain. There are also secret schemes to exclude us, if they can, from the trade of Ireland, to possess themselves of the carrying trade of the United States, by prohibiting any American vessel to bring to Great Britain any commodity but those of the State to which it belongs. Thus, a Philadelphia vessel can carry no tobacco, rice, or indigo, nor a Carolina vessel wheat or flour, nor a Boston vessel either, unless grown in its own State. In this way, a superficial party think they can possess themselves of the carriage of almost all the productions of the United States, annihilate our navigation and nurseries of seamen, and keep all to themselves more effectually than ever. They talk too of discouraging the people of the United States, and encouraging those of Canada and Nova Scotia, in such a manner as to increase the population of those two Provinces, even by migrations from the United States. These are dreams, to be sure; but the dreamers are so many, as to intimidate the present Ministry, who dare venture upon nothing that will make a clamor. I have lately heard, that the merchants in America are waiting to hear the regulations of trade made here. They will wait, I know not how long. There is no present prospect of our agreeing at all upon any regulations of trade.
I have the honor to be, &c.
JOHN ADAMS.
TO ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON.
Paris, June 23d, 1783.
Sir,
The British nation and Ministry are in a very unsettled state; they find themselves in a new situation, and have not digested any plan. Ireland is in a new situation; she is independent of Parliament, and the English know not how to manage her. To what an extent she will claim a right of trading with the United States, is unknown. Canada too, and Nova Scotia, are in a new situation; the former, they say, must have a new government. But what form to give them, and, indeed, what kind of government they are capable of, or would be agreeable to them, is uncertain. Nothing is digested.
There is a party, composed probably of refugees, friends of the old hostile system, and fomented by emissaries of several foreign nations, who do not wish a cordial reconciliation and sincere friendship between Great Britain and the United States, who clamor for the conservation of the navigation act, and the carrying trade. If these should succeed so far as to excite Parliament or the Ministry to adopt a contracted principle, to exclude us from the West India trade, and from trading with Canada and Nova Scotia, and from carrying freely, in vessels belonging to any one of the Thirteen States, the production of any other to Great Britain, the consequences may be to perplex us for a time, may bind us closer to France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Italy, and the northern nations, and thus be fatal to Great Britain, without being finally very hurtful to us.
The nations of Europe, who have islands in the West Indies, have, at this moment, a delicate part to take. Upon their present decisions, great things will depend. The commerce of the West India Islands, is a part of the American system of commerce. They can neither do without us, nor we without them. The Creator has placed us upon the globe in such a situation, that we have occasion for each other. We have the means of assisting each other, and politicians and artful contrivances cannot separate us. Wise statesmen, like able artists of every kind, study nature, and their works are perfect in proportion as they conform to her laws. Obstinate attempts to prevent the islands and the continent, by force or policy, from deriving from each other those blessings, which nature has enabled them to afford, will only put both to thinking of means of coming together. And an injudicious regulation at this time may lay a foundation for intimate combinations, between the islands and the continent, which otherwise would not be wished for, or thought of by either.
If the French, Dutch, and Danes, have common sense, they will profit of any blunder Great Britain may commit upon this occasion. The ideas of the British cabinet and merchants, at present, are so confused upon all these subjects, that we can get them to agree to nothing. I still think, that the best policy of the United States is, to send a Minister to London to negotiate a treaty of commerce, instructed to conclude nothing, not the smallest article, until he has sent it to Congress, and received their approbation. In the meantime, Congress may admit any British or Irish ships, that have arrived, or may arrive, to trade as they please.