Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/281



Both parties in truth exaggerated the difficulties of their opponent's scheme, being attached to their own. The real question at issue was, which country should take the initiative in a Free-trade policy. Mr. Wilson, as an extreme Free-trader, insisted that the law of America sanctioned reciprocity on their part, without having recourse to Congress, which the members of the Shipowners' Society controverted. There can be no doubt that the American Law of 1828 did so authorize the President to reciprocate any relaxation of the Navigation Laws we might on our part resolve on. But when Mr. Buchanan had so recently reserved the American coasting trade, repudiating the unauthorized pledge previously given by the American envoy, and had further frankly stated to Mr. Crampton, that "it was probable some difference of opinion would manifest itself in Congress upon this question, from the unwillingness felt in some quarters to throw open the ship-building business in the United States to the competition of British shipbuilders, and more particularly to that of the shipbuilders of the British North American colonies;" we might have been quite sure that Congress would, if necessary, interfere, and, by some special law, annul the liberal principle of the American Law of 1828.

Mr. Wilson and the Free-traders, affecting to be better informed on the state of American law than the Shipowners, went into the opposite extreme, and expressed their entire confidence in the complete reciprocity of the Americans; asserting further, that without going to Congress, the Executive could