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 in Council were issued, relating to the importation of tobacco, and payment of duties: a matter of no little difficulty before the organisation of the English warehousing system. The third of these "Orders" renewed that of the 2nd of July, regulating the intercourse between the United States and the West Indies, but relaxed the previous regulations for the British trade so far as to permit the importation of any unmanufactured goods not prohibited by law, except oil, pitch, tar, turpentine, indigo, masts, yards, and bowsprits, being the produce of the United States, either by British or American subjects, and either in British or American vessels. This arrangement, having received parliamentary sanction, was continued annually with little alteration throughout the next five years; but the Americans during this period persisted in urging their claims to have both trades placed on a more liberal system.

In 1784 Congress recommended to the legislature of the different States the adoption of a resolution prohibiting, for fifteen years, the importation and exportation of every species of merchandise, in vessels belonging to any foreign powers not provided with a commercial treaty with the United States. The people of Boston had been highly exasperated by the exclusion of their vessels from the ports of the West Indies, and by the high duties on rice, oil, and tobacco, while their shipping had also suffered by the British regulations of her fisheries along the American coasts.

They overlooked the great fact that the independence of the North American colonies necessarily placed them in the same relative position to