Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/270



Although the political connection of Great Britain with the United States of America had been violently rent asunder, there happily remained between the two countries the bonds of one common origin, language, religion, and mutual interest. No sooner had American independence been acknowledged than all prohibitory regulations made during the war were abolished. Indeed, for a time, no manifest or any other shipping document was required from any vessel of the United States ariving at or clearing out from a British port; and the Crown being meanwhile authorised to regulate the manner in which trade should be carried on, a royal proclamation was immediately issued on the 14th of March, 1783, for the admission, till further orders, into the ports of Great Britain, of any unmanufactured commodities, the produce of the United States, either in British or American ships, without the usual certificates, and on payment of the same duties as were payable on similar articles imported from British America. The same drawbacks and bounties were also allowed on goods coming from the United States as on those from the British possessions; and the benefit of the order was extended to all American vessels that had arrived since the 20th of January.

These concessions, however, neither gave satisfaction to the American shipowners, nor to the English sticklers for the Navigation Act in all its force. A controversy arose respecting the extent of commercial

settlement, Sierra Leone has met with indifferent success, and it has been attacked more than once by the French and the neighbouring Ashantees. The climate is peculiarly deadly to European constitutions (Macpherson, iv. pp. 128 and 223).]
 * [Footnote: out is said to have been four hundred males and sixty women. As a