Слике страница
PDF
ePub

trade we had opened to them: and, accordingly, they held themselves entitled to apply such clogs and impediments to our people, in that trade, as should, in their own arbitrary estimate, be equivalent to the disadvantages, under which they represented themselves to be labouring. Among the measures devised by them for effecting this imaginary balance, and for reducing our shipping to the assumed level with theirs, was one-in principle the most untenable perhaps that ever was contemplated by an intelligent commercial Country: they prohibited the "circuitous "voyage;" that is to say, a British Ship was forbidden to lade, in an American port, a legal cargo for a legal destination, solely upon the ground of some other voyage, in which she had been previously engaged, or in which she might be afterwards employed. If the Ship did not come from the West Indies she was not allowed to lade for the West Indies.

While thus the direct trade only between the United States, and our West India Colonies was permitted to British Ships, there was, properly speaking, no direct trade open to them; for our West India productions were virtually prohibited in the United States by excessive duties, so that, being compelled to go out in ballast, the whole charge of the Voyage fell on the homeward cargo. Besides which, the West Indies were, as the Americans well knew, a situation ill calculated

to be made the domicile of the class of ships which must be there established, if the direct trade should be seriously undertaken by the British.

It may seem that the American ship would suffer a disadvantage of equal amount, in being compelled by the same cause (though of their own creating) to return empty. But this was not the case; the American Ship had also her contingent voyages peculiar to herself, and belonging to her national circumstances. After having landed her cargo of lumber in a British tropical Country and received payment in cash, she proceeded, in ballast, to a neighbouring tropical Country of her own; and she carried a cargo of sugar or cotton from an American port in the South, to an American port in the North trade, in which we never thought of employing a British ship.

a

There are also other trades, though not so peculiarly national to the Americans as the above, in connexion with which a trip, with lumber and provisions to the British West Indies, and a supply there of hard dollars in payment, constituted a very convenient part of the adventure. And it is a curious fact, that one of the chief advantages of the intercourse trade to the Americans, and for which they chiefly feel the loss of it, lies in the opportunities they have of conducting it by "circuitous voyages."

Assuredly the expedient of confining us to the "direct voyage" was a contrivance of considerable ingenuity.

No people have ever professed so strongly as the Americans, to be ready to exchange with other countries that freedom of navigation which is to give exercise to the peculiar faculties of each and yet have we seen them tracing our ships around the Globe to compute their profits in foreign ports-prying into transactions with which they have no concern, and surpassing all other people in the invention of contrivances, and make-weights for counteracting the advantage of any such faculty in a rival.

After such treatment as this, deliberately continued in the face of the Act of 1825, we could never hope that a British ship would have a "clear stage" in an American port: and nothing remained, but for us either to withdraw altogether, the concession, by which we had exposed our ships to a contest in which they would not have "fair play;" or, to acknowledge our own inability to do so, on account of the entire dependence of our West India Colonies on the United States.

It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of commercial rivalries, that extraordinary efforts, to secure the whole of a particular branch of trade, have generally terminated in the loss of

The advocates of monopoly seldom look far before them, for they are mostly the "spoiled "children" of easy-earned profits.

The stream which is dammed up to an excessive height for the sake of a great head of water in a particular spot, breaks its bank higher up, and finding a new course in a deeper valley, returns no more to its former channel.

Our West India Colonies were never more abundantly or more cheaply supplied than they now are, and have been, since the United States shut their ports against British Ships. At their own expense they have made depôts of their goods at neutral Islands, and large portions of them find their way through our own Colonies in the North. The first prices of the goods suffering deduction for the extra charge or double circuitous conveyance.

It must be remembered that the contest has reference to ships, and not to goods; and therefore since the stoppage of the direct trade, our laws have received numerous modifications with a view to render our Northern Colonies the principal channel for its indirect course.

The river St. Lawrence and its Lakes wash the frontier of an immense district of the most fertile lands of the United States, and which have no other efficient outlet for their products: and such are the improvements which, stimulated by the interruption of the Atlantick intercourse,

have been made in the navigation of that River, that, if we persevere in our present regulations, or in others of similar operation, the effect will now be, to transfer to the back Provinces of the United States that market for their production which had previously been enjoyed by the Provinces on the Atlantick. In that case the goods passing the mouth of the St. Lawrence can only be shipped, for sea, in a British Port, and as their destination will be to a British Port the carriage must, of necessity, be wholly our

own.

We have before said, that it is not usual for a Country to refuse the sale of its goods, because it is not allowed to carry them to the purchaser.

The effects, therefore, we have been describing will not be produced by our exclusion of the American Ships, but by their rejection of ours.

We professed only to return to our antient Colonial system after the total failure of an experiment in departing from it. The opening of a new and far preferable channel of supply for us is the sole work of the Government of the United States. If this species of retaliation is inconvenient to the United States it was their own act, and they have had the power to discontinue it.

We have never complained of it. If they have sacrificed their favourite market in order to inflict privations on us, that is their expe

-

« ПретходнаНастави »