Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/374

 other were secured the privilege of remaining and continuing their trade, so long as they committed no offence against the laws; and even if their conduct should induce the government to order them to depart from the country, they were allowed twelve months to remove their families and effects.

These were the chief articles of this treaty. The disaffected on both sides the water found, however, as has almost invariably been the case in commercial treaties, great fault with it. The shipowners of the United States complained of the restrictions put upon their shipping intercourse with the West Indies; while the cavillers in Great Britain looked upon the permission to use vessels of seventy tons in the trade between the United States and these islands as equivalent to the creating a nursery of seamen for the use of America. But the treaty, in spite of these cavillings, was signed by Lord Grenville and Mr. Jay on the 19th of November, 1794. It was not, however, until the 25th of October, 1795, that the ratifications between the two governments were exchanged. The House of Representatives in the United States did not sanction this treaty till the 30th of April, 1796, nor was the Act for carrying its provisions into effect passed in the British Parliament till the 4th of July, 1797. Throughout the whole negotiation Mr. Jay admits that he was apprehensive of giving umbrage to France; but while he is eloquent about the British spoliations on American commerce, he was forced to admit that British vessels had been captured by French privateers, illegally