These restrictions injurious, alike, to England and her Colonies.
But besides this, these restrictive measures on the part of Great Britain, had in more than one instance, proved, in many other respects, most injurious to her own people, while inflicting the greatest hardships and most lamentable sufferings on her own West Indian colonies. Thus, between 1780 and 1787 no less than 15,000 slaves perished from starvation, having been unable to obtain the requisite supplies of food from the North American colonies at a period, when the home-grown portion of their sustenance had been destroyed by several hurricanes. Yet, notwithstanding this terrible calamity, the British Parliament persevered in the system it adopted, and ultimately passed an Act (28 Geo. III., cap. 6) whereby no goods could be imported into the West Indies from the United States, even in British ships, except about thirty enumerated articles, the produce of these States. Indeed, the Act went so far as to prohibit the importation of even these articles from any of the foreign West Indian Islands, except in cases of public emergency, when the governors of individual colonies were allowed to relax this prohibition. Similar laws were also passed to prohibit the importation of goods into our North American colonies from the United States, except for similar reasons.
Commercial treaties with America between 1794 and 1817.
The injurious consequences of such policy, especially in the provocation it gave to the Americans, led to the conclusion, in 1794, of the treaty to which I have already incidentally referred[26] (though, strange to say, even this was disapproved of by many persons in England), whereby American vessels, not exceeding seventy tons burden, were allowed admission into the British West Indies with such articles of United States produce as were not generally prohibited, and, at the same time, permitted to export therefrom to the United States any produce of the West Indies legally exportable thereto in British vessels. Curiously enough, the following proviso was appended to this clause:—“That this liberty only extends to a direct intercourse between the British West Indies and the ports of the United States, and the United States engage to prohibit the carriage of molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton in American vessels, either from his Majesty’s dominions or from the United States to any other part of the world.” The treaty also provided for placing the trade between Great Britain and the United States on a permanent footing, it having till then been regulated by Orders in Council. This treaty, which gave even greater dissatisfaction in the United States than in England, was not ratified by Congress till 1796; nor was the Act for giving effect to it in Great Britain passed till the following year.
This Act, however, made no provision for the admission of American vessels generally into our colonies. It simply provided that American ships were at liberty to import into Great Britain such produce of their own States as was admissible in British vessels; it moreover imposed a tonnage duty on the ships, and a discriminating duty on the goods imported by them, in order to countervail any duties levied on goods imported into the United States by British ships. The provisions of the treaty as to opening the trade of the West Indies appear to have fallen to the ground. An additional article to the treaty of 1794 stipulated that the article containing those provisions shall be suspended; while a later treaty (1806) contained a recital that the two high contracting parties had been unable to arrange the terms on which the commerce between the United States and the West Indies was to be carried on. In fact, they came to no definite arrangements till the United States passed their retaliatory Acts in 1817 and 1820, and, even then, it took more than ten years to settle the differences between them on almost any one question. Indeed, the only alterations of any importance made between 1806 and the passing of the American Navigation Act, in 1817, were the opening of the trade between the United States and our North American colonies, in 1807, and the conclusion of a treaty in 1815 abolishing the differential duties levied by the two countries on the ships of each other in respect of direct voyages between them.[27]
In 1808, and more fully in 1810, similar privileges were granted to the Portuguese dominions in South America; and, in 1822, these were extended to all countries in America, being, or having been, under the dominion of Spain. When the Customs Laws were first consolidated in 1825, the exceptions became the rule, and importations from Asia and Africa were placed on a similar footing to those from America. Thus our original rule as to importations from Asia and Africa, as well as from America, was broken down.
Acts of 1822 and 1823, and further irritation in America.
Though the Act of 1822 allowed a considerable number of articles to be imported into the free ports of the West Indies from any foreign country in America in ships of such country, it contained a clause reserving to the King the power of prohibiting such intercourse with any foreign country not treating British shipping with equal favour. The President of the United States, having been previously empowered by Congress to open the ports of that country to British vessels on the same terms as were required from United States vessels when coming from any British port in the West Indies, passed on the 21st March, 1823, an Act to regulate “the commercial intercourse between the United States and certain British ports.” By this Act the ports of the United States became open to British vessels coming from the free ports of the British North American and West Indian possessions, while power was given to the President to remove the differential duties levied on goods so imported, on receiving information that similar privileges had been conceded in such British colonial ports to the vessels of the United States. The Act, however, required all goods so imported to be the produce of the colony whence they came and to have been imported thence direct. It further enacted that such British ships might take back produce of the United States, provided they gave bonds to land it directly at the port for which they cleared out. As the provisions of this Act were, however, to depend on the continuance of those enacted by the British Legislature in 1822 (3rd Geo. IV., cap. 44), and, as the vessels of the United States were not placed on precisely the same footing in the ports of the West Indies as British ships, this power of the President was never exercised, and a British Order in Council in opposition to it was subsequently issued on the 21st July, 1823. Here again arose another war of tariffs, for this Order levied countervailing duties on vessels of the United States and their cargoes in the ports of the British North American and West Indian possessions from the ports in the United States to the extent of 4s. 3d. per ton, as well as a discriminating duty of 10 per cent. on imported articles.
Order in Council, July, 1826.
In 1825, when the consolidation of the Customs Laws was under consideration, as well as the extension of treaties with other countries, negotiations were again renewed with the United States, but they were not successful, and another Order in Council was issued on the 27th July, 1826, reciting that the conditions laid down by the Possessions Act, 6 Geo. IV., cap. 114, had not been fulfilled, that is to say, that the United States had not reciprocated the privileges Great Britain had granted to American ships, and that, therefore, the privileges possessed by American vessels of importing the produce of their country into British possessions abroad, and of exporting the produce of those possessions to any foreign country whatever, would cease on certain dates fixed in the following year. As might have been anticipated, the President issued, on the 17th March, 1827, a proclamation prohibiting the trade and intercourse with the British possessions authorised by the Act of Congress of 1st March, 1823.