destitute of navigation, and offered extensive markets for British manufactures, which they were obliged to pay for in raw materials. They possessed no colonies, and therefore, if they accepted the offer of trading with the British West Indies, it had the effect of placing English vessels upon the most favored footing in their ports-in fact, upon the footing of free trade, while the equivalent was a restricted trade with the British colonies. The same effect would have taken place if the United States had accepted of that offer. When properly considered, therefore, these laws seem to be only another mode of maintaining and perpetuating the colonial monopoly.

Their objects were twofold: 1st, to lay the foundation for a claim of favors in the ports of the South American republics, by throwing open her West India ports to their navigation, sensible that nothing could be apprehended from their competition; and 2dly, to ascertain their capability of supplying her islands with those staple commodities, which she before had reluctantly permitted to be brought from the United States.

By this apparent departure from her colonial system, she offered to the new republics a specious equivalent for commercial favors, and laid the foundation for further cir

cumscribing the trade of this republic.

Having, it is to be presumed, ascertained that supplies could be obtained from those states, an order of council was issued July 27th, 1826, closing the American colonial ports, excepting in Nova Scotia and Canada, to vessels belonging to the United States, after the 1st of December, 1826. To the offer made by the American minister, (Mr. Gallatin, who had just arrived at his post,) to renew the negotiation on this subject, the following pointed remark was made in answer, accompanied by a refusal to discuss the matter by Mr. Canning; a remark which fully explains the policy and design of his government. "It is not made matter of complaint," said he, "by the British government, that the United States have declined conditions which other nations have thought worthy of their acceptance. It is, on the other hand, not the fault of the British government, if the United States have suffered the time to pass, at which it might have been an object of greater importance to this country to induce the United States to come into their (Anglice its) proposals."

The further prosecution of this negotiation, and the final decision of the question, form a part of the occurrences of the next year; but the agitation of the controversy,

and the grounds taken by the respective governments, fall naturally within the view here taken of the colonial system, and belong to a series of events, which transpired within the 50th year of American independence, and which are of the highest importance, in a consideration of the present condition and future prospects of the continent.

This question concerning the colonial trade, is connected with the right to the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and with the pretensions of Great Britain to the shores of the bay of Honduras, from which, about the same time, she undertook to exclude American vessels. It forms a part of her general plan, to derogate from the independence of the western hemisphere, and of course, comes within the legitimate deliberations of the Panama congress. England contends, that the colonial trade stands upon different grounds from that with the mother country, and that all participation in it, is to be considered as a boon, for which an equivalent is to be paid.

The United States maintain, that all intercourse between countries, whether colonial or otherwise, is to be regulated according to the views of the respective governments, and that the colonial trade does not, in that respect, differ from that with the mother coun

try. That it is all founded upon mutual convenience, and that no compensation can be considered as due for a permission to trade with the colonies, except that which arises from mutual exchanges.

In this manner, the continuance of colonial restrictions is put distinctly in issue, and the two governments are in direct opposition as to their propriety and validity.

The long space of time during which these restrictions have been enforced, with the assent of the commercial world, has strengthened the claim of the European powers interested in maintaining them, into a sort of prescriptive right. An assent, arising from the fact, that Europe was interested in their establishment, and that America was a mere dependency, destitute of a sovereign power to declare its dissent from principles, which placed the rights and privilege of the new world, prostrate at the feet of European commerce, is relied on to prove their admission into the conventional law of nations.

But this assent, however conclusive, in a discussion between two European powers, cannot have much binding force in an argument addressed to America. She may reply, that these principles never received her voluntary sanction, and that submission to them, while in a state of thraldom

and minority, cannot be construed into an assent to deprive her of the privileges of independence and maturity. The time and mode of asserting and enforcing these privileges, must, of course, be regulated by circumstances. Prudence will dictate, that no measure be adopted, which shall lightly compromit the essential interests of the country, and a due regard for the tranquillity of mankind, will prevent any rash disturbance of the established order of things. But these rights exist independent of, and paramount to, the arbitrary rules of a system, invented to foster the interests of Europe, at the expense of America. They are derived from the nature of man, and from his wants and his capacities. The same Providence that gave him the earth to inhabit, and the power of social and commercial intercourse to supply his wants and augment his happiness, has placed the means of relieving them within his reach, in proportion to their urgency. He has made the productions of contiguous countries most suitable to the mutual wants of their respective inhabitants, and a prohibition, from a third power, of intercourse between them, is an infringement upon their natural rights. It is a wrong to both parties. The communities occupying these adjacent territories, have an unquestionable right to agree up

on the terms upon which they will trade, and either of them may, of course, insist on shackling the intercourse with restrictions, or may decline it altogether. The power of regulating it while vested in their hands, will never be exercised, but with a due regard to their interests. But a prohibition from a 'trans-atlantic government, rests upon different grounds. It is founded upon false principles, established by power, and submitted to from necessity, and it extends itself beyond its rightful jurisdiction, to the injury of the commenity over which it is exerted, and of all others whose commerce is circumscribed by it.

It cannot be expected, that such a system will be tolerated one moment longer than necessary. The colonists themselves have a paramount interest in overturning it, and will demand their independence whenever their strength, measured with the power of the mother country, will justify such a step.

The citizens of all the independent powers of this hemisphere, and especially those of the United States, have a less, but still a direct interest in bringing about this event, and in sustaining them in that stand, and their aid will be afforded, whenever their relations with the colonial powers of Europe will permit them to take part in such a dispute.

It is easy to foresee the result of this state of things. It predicts with an unerring voice, the separation of America from Europe.

With the ocean between them, contending on their own soil for their natural rights, against forces which must be sent from the other side of the Atlantic, and maintained at a ruinous expense, the colonists, unaided, must in time achieve their freedom. In this contest, whenever it shall take place, they will find natural allies in all the independent powers of America, having at their head, a republic of 12,000,000 of people, all interested from patriotic recollections and promised advantages in sustaining the American cause.

A republic, where the means of education, by the common school system, are placed within the reach of every class, and the avenues to station and eminence are opened by the constitution, to all, without distinction of rank; where frequent elections and constant discussion through an unrestrained press, have created a general taste for politics, and made every citizen eager to devise and prompt to support propositions for the advancement of the common weal, while the system of defence has put arms in the hands of all, and rendered a whole people, who feel the government and its policy to be their own, an army,undisciplined it is true, but still

zealous for the national interests and honor. Circumstances have now placed this power in opposition to the last relicts of the colonial system, and at the same moment have made the new American states deeply interested in the same cause, and brought their representatives into a joint assembly, to deliberate upon the best means of promoting their common interests. The claim of Great Britain, to erect the settlements of her logwood cutters, in the bay of Honduras, into colonial establishments, advanced at the same time, and as part of the same system, is not merely in violation of the treaties by which her subjects were permitted to cut dye woods within certain limits, but also in violation of the territorial rights of Colombia, Mexico, and Central America. The shores of this bay belong to those powers, by virtue of their succession, each within its ancient provincial limits, to the sovereignty of Spain. This unfounded pretension of Great Britain to the shores of this bay, and to exclude the navigation of the United States from its ports, is a direct infringement upon their rights, as well as upon ours, and binds them to resist this attempt to perpetuate the old and to create new colonial restrictions. All these restrictions are inconsistent with the well being of this continent, and must be abolished.

The progress of events points directly to their final abolition. The colonial empires of Spain and Portugal no longer exist. Brazil, almost without a struggle, has become an independent state.

The Spanish colonies have taken the same rank in defiance of all the exertions of the mother country. Buenos Ayres, Colombia, Mexico, Chili, Central America, and the Perus, have successively assumed their stations among the nations of the earth; and while they have achieved their own freedom, they have augmented the independence of those who have preceded them in their glorious career. They have contributed to the dissolution of the colonial connection of America with Europe, and given the pledge of their national existence against its re-establishment. They have opened their ports to the world, and their resources and productions are offered to American as well as to European commerce.

From New Brunswick and Canada to Cape Horn, the independence of the continent is achieved, and America now demands the abrogation of those rules, by which her equality to other quarters of the globe has been denied, and her resources appropriated, and her commerce monopolized by the inhabitants of another hemisphere.

How this demand is to be enforced, whether by the particular de

termination of the several governments, or their joint agreement in the Panama Congress; whether by an interdiction of all intercourse between the colonies and the several states, or between the mother country and all the independent states of this continent, until her possessions, both in Europe and America, are placed upon the same footing, and governed by the same rules of navigation, are questions which must be determined by future events. The adoption of any of these alternatives would be decisive. The commerce of Great Britain with the United States alone, would never be forfeited by that government for the poor equivalent which the monopoly of the colonial navigation affords; and, if this government, upon the expiration of the commercial treaty, in 1828, should insist upon the relinquishment of these distinctions between the colonial and other trade, and more especially if the other American powers should take the same ground, and adopt the same principle in the Panama congress, the total abolition of all colonial restraints would be effected, and the independence of this continent fully consummated.

Such is the attitude assumed by the United States towards Europe, at the completion of the first half century after the blow given to the colonial system, by their separation