reimbursed only in a highly prosperous trade, and when the article in question commands the importer's price. But though it is not necessary to the argument of the Undersigned to make out a case of injury, he may observe that the operation of a differential duty is injurious to the trade against which the discrimination exists, in more than one way. It occasions a direct loss to the importer, who pays the high duty when the article imported by him comes in competition with the same article paying the nominal duty. This is the only injury to which Lord Aberdeen seems to advert in his note of August 11, 1842. This injury was actually suffered, under the operation of the law of 1836, by many persons engaged in the American trade. In addition to this, from the moment a law was passed admitting rice in the husk from the whole Western Coast of Africa, not subject to Great Britain, on a nominal duty, The United States became entitled to this privilege. The continuance of the high duty was in effect the imposition of a heavy tax on an article which they had a right to import into England duty free; and they suffered, therefore, under the operation of the law, all the injurious effects of high duties on foreign agricultural produce not raised at home, in raising prices, diminishing consumption, encouraging smuggling at the expense of the fair trade, and thus reducing the amount of capital engaged in producing the article, This injury is wholly independent of competition. The duty of 17. per quarter was probably about 75 per cent. on the original cost of the article; and, therefore, eminently calculated to inflict an injury of this description on all the capital and industry required to produce it, import it, and prepare it for consumption.

It cannot be necessary for the Undersigned to urge that the right of importing an article of food into England on a nominal duty, would be a most important boon to The United States. Such an article rice certainly is. No cultivated grain feeds a larger part of the human race. The law of 1836 gave the privilege of importing this article of food duty free to the whole Western Coast of Africa, a tract of country much more extensive than the rice-growing region of America. In a season of scarcity or high prices of corn in England, there is not the least doubt that, with the same privilege, this article of food would be largely imported in the husk from The United States, and a fresh impulse given to the agriculture of a very extensive district. It became the right of The United States to send it to Great Britain free of duty, so soon as the same article was allowed to be imported duty free from any other foreign country. The loss of whatever extension of agriculture and employment of capital in carrying on the exchanges would have taken place, is an injury to that extent, not appreciable, of course, in money, but forcibly illustrating the unsoundness and dangerous tendency of the principle of

justifying contraventions of clear Treaty stipulations, by estimates of the injuries supposed to be occasioned to individuals. It is the main object of all general Commercial Treaties to avert from the trade and industry of a country injury of this kind, and to secure the corresponding opposite benefit. So far is the ground taken by the American Government on this subject from being inconsistent with the spirit and intent of the Treaty of Commerce of July, 1815, that the Undersigned considers that Treaty, as far as it applies to this subject at all, to have had specifically for its purpose to prevent either party from enacting laws like that of 5th and 6th William IV, chap. 60.

The foregoing observations will serve, in the opinion of the Undersigned, as an answer to the first part of Lord Aberdeen's note; in which it is inferred, from the assumption that no injury was done, or intended to be done, to The United States, that no claim for restitution exists.

Lord Aberdeen next inquires into the extent to which the parties in interest are American citizens. This part of his Lordship's communication is in direct reply to the supplementary note of the 23rd May, 1842; in which the Undersigned stated that he had procured the return of all the claims, and found that more than two-thirds had been paid on account of citizens of The United States. The Undersigned observed to Lord Aberdeen that he did not, of course, regard this circumstance as making any difference in the justice of the case, as a right secured by Treaty, although he trusted that it would be regarded as a full justification of the urgency with which he was instructed to press the claims.

Lord Aberdeen appears to entertain a different opinion; and, having controverted the statement of the Undersigned as to the preponderance of the American interest, seems to regard that circumstance as one of considerable importance. The Undersigned cannot so consider it. The object of The United States in entering into the Treaty of Commerce was to place their trade on a certain footing. This object is defeated; and The United States is injured by the passing of laws calculated, and, in the opinion of those most interested in their enactment, designed, to drive a product of American agricultural labour out of the market; and this alike whether the trade in that article is carried on by British or American capital. Lord Aberdeen will have seen, in the note of the Undersigned of 2nd April, 1842, a reference to a speech of Sir Robert Peel, in which the law of 1836 is objected to, expressly on the ground that it might interfere with an employment of English capital in a profitable branch of American trade. The United States have a direct interest in protecting such an employment, and it is their duty to do so.

But, however opinions may differ on this point, the Undersigned believes the facts to be as originally stated by him. Lord Aberdeen,

in his note of 11th August, 1842, acquaints the Undersigned that "the authorities of the Board of Customs had authentically informed his Lordship that the principal portion of the duty levied on American rough rice, imported since the passing of the Act of 5th and 6th William IV, chap. 60, in August, 1836, was paid by four firms, all British merchants, viz.: Messrs. Lucas and Ewbank, and Messrs. Forster and Smith, of this port; and Messrs. Simpson and Co., and Messrs. Hill and Smith, of Liverpool." These houses, with the exception of an error in designating one of them, are those whose names, with the amount of interest pertaining to each, were before the Undersigned when his supplementary note of 23rd May was prepared. The house of Messrs. Lucas and Ewbank, named by the Board of Customs as importers of American rice since 1836, has not been in existence since 1833. Of this house, the senior party (Mr. Lucas) was an American citizen. Of the house of Ewbank and Cordes, which is the party having the greatest interest, Mr. Cordes is a native citizen of The United States, a fact, of which documentary proof is before the Undersigned. As respects the house of C. R. Simpson and Co., Mr. Higham, an American citizen, of the firm of Higham and Fife, of Charleston, South Carolina, is a partner; and with him, both Mr. Fife and the son of Mr. Higham are interested.

In reference to the debenture bond, it does not state that the exporter is an Englishman, but that he is the owner at the time of re-shipment. But as the Undersigned has shown that the interest, represented by the Board of Customs as English, is really a joint American interest, with the proof of this fact, the inference, apparently intended to be drawn from the debenture bonds, falls to the ground.

Lord Aberdeen remarks, that "it is a curious and instructive fact, and tends to throw no small light on the subject of the claims now advanced on the part of United States citizens, that in the month of May last, the Board of Customs received a notice from the solicitor of certain parties, intimating that Messrs. Lucas and Ewbank had assigned to the said parties all sums of money which they claimed, or which might become payable to them, in respect of the duty paid by them on rough rice." "On this fact," Lord Aberdeen adds, “it is not necessary to make any comment."

The Undersigned is not sure that he apprehends the purport of this suggestion. If it is supposed to confirm a presumption that the house of Ewbank and Cordes (not Lucas and Ewbank, for the reason above stated) is a British house, it is sufficiently answered by the fact that Mr. Cordes is a citizen of The United States. If the circumstance is stated by Lord Aberdeen as showing that the interest of Messrs. Ewbank and Cordes, having been assigned to British merchants, has

now become British, the Undersigned need scarcely say, that the amount assigned by Messrs. Ewbank and Cordes will not be credited to them by the assignees, unless it is paid by the British Government. So that the interest of Messrs. Ewbank and Cordes in their claim is, in no degree, diminished by the assignment.

Lord Aberdeen observes, "that it was not till long after the Act of relaxation had gone into force, that the notion of its contravention of the Commercial Treaty was taken up. Two years had actually elapsed before such an idea had entered into the heads of the American merchants." Lord Aberdeen will, however, have seen, in the former part of this note, the evidence that, before the passage of the Act, and when the relaxation was contemplated, it was opposed by the American merchants. It is true that the first remonstrance against the Act was made by Mr. Stevenson, in 1838; but the very Act itself allows a period of 3 years, in which to claim repayment for overcharged duties. Although the Undersigned has not been advised of the particular causes which prevented an earlier application, it is most certain that the omission cannot affect the merits of the case, as a question of right under the Treaty. A demand of restitution, similar in all respects, of the excess of duty levied on American bees-wax, while this article was allowed, by the same law (of 5th and 6th William IV, c. 69), to come in from the coast of Africa on a lower duty, was first presented 2 months later than Mr. Stevenson's first protest on the subject of rough rice, and was promptly acceded to. In that case, the Treasury, without resorting to Parliament, promptly equalized the duty, and refunded the excess already levied. In the case of the rice, not only was the claim disregarded, in reference to the past, but the duty continued to be levied for 3 years after the American Minister had signified to Lord Palmerston that the Government of The United States regarded it as contravening the Treaty. Having thus, he believes, gone through all the points in Lord Aberdeen's note, the Undersigned will briefly advert to the precise nature of the claims at the present moment.

An absolute legal payment has, it is believed, been made in but few, if any, of the cases. The great majority of the claims are for a restoration of duties paid under protest, or the surrender of Exchequer bills, deposited as security for the eventual payment of the amount of duty which should be decided to be due. This course was pursued in both cases, on the advice of Mr. Stevenson, the predecessor of the Undersigned, who particularly requested the agent of the parties in interest to discontinue an action which had been commenced against the collector, and to leave the subject wholly in his (Mr. Stevenson's) Ian is, to be settled through the interposition of the Government of The United States.

A large amount in Exchequer bills was thus deposited, and has

been accordingly, for years, and is still locked up, useless to the Government, and lost to the parties from whom it has been received.

Her Majesty's Government seems to admit, by not undertaking to settle the question, that, as one party to the Treaty, it is not competent to settle a question in which the other sovereign party has an equal interest. The Undersigned, in his note of 2nd April, 1842, proposed a mode of settlement, with the consent of the parties interested, to which he had hoped Her Majesty's Government would promptly accede. By the Constitution of The United States, a British merchant, having a similar claim against the American Government, has his remedy in the Federal Courts: a Treaty is the law of the land. The Undersigned is advised that the case is different in this country; and that a Treaty cannot be pleaded in the courts of law against an Act of Parliament. But as this question was one eminently for judicial decision, and as Lord Palmerston had informed Mr. Stevenson that it had been submitted to the law officers of the Crown, the Undersigned thought it peculiarly reasonable that the American merchant in England should have that remedy which a British merchant would have in America in a similar case; and proposed to Lord Aberdeen that Her Majesty's Government should procure the passage of a law, authorizing an issue to be made in Her Majesty's courts, and the Treaty to be pleaded. It is proper for the Undersigned to add, that his Government, though induced to sanction this proposal in the present instance, and in the willingness of the parties to abide by it, will not pledge itself to recognize it as a precedent in future cases.

Of this proposal for the settlement of the reserved point, Lord Aberdeen has taken no notice in his communication of the 11th August; nor has he informed the Undersigned in what way it can or ought to be settled, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government; nor what final disposition is to be made of the deposited Exchequer bills.

In addition to all the other considerations advanced in this and his former note in support of these claims, the Undersigned would finally observe, that the case of the importers of rough rice differs in no degree, as to principle, from that of the importers of bees-wax and of woollens. In reference to the former, the discriminating duty was promptly abandoned, and the excess refunded, in virtue of a Treasury Order (of the 29th December, 1838), as soon as the demand was made; and in the case of the woollens, after a long postponement and mature reflection, the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury directed that the high duty should be discontinued, and the excess restored; although, from the causes mentioned at length in the recent note of the Undersigned on that subject, the last part