Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/426

 enter or attempt to enter the same in violation of this Act, shall, with her tackle, apparel, and furniture, together with the cargo on board such vessel, be forfeited to the United States."

"After the date above mentioned, no vessel owned wholly or in part by subjects of his Britannic Majesty, though the same may have been duly entered in the United States, and the duties on goods, wares, and merchandise imported duly paid, can be cleared out laden with articles the growth, produce, or manufacture of the United States, before the owner or consignee shall have given bond and sureties, in double the value of the articles aforesaid, that they shall not be landed in any port or place in a colony or territory of his Britannic Majesty, which by the ordinary laws of navigation and trade is closed against vessels owned by citizens of the United States."

Such was the mode adopted by the Americans to coerce Great Britain into the relinquishment of her exclusive colonial trade. But at the very same time a negotiation was opened in London to carry out the views of the government of the United States, to settle all the differences relating to impressments, the fisheries and boundaries, and to secure a fresh treaty and convention on terms of reciprocity. Prior to entering upon the negotiations, it was agreed that the subsisting convention should be continued for a term of not less than eight years.

In 1818 a reciprocity treaty was concluded between the United States and the King of the Netherlands on the same basis as the convention subsisting with Great Britain. The Dutch colonial trade was not,