Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/83

 manner? In other words, they were already prepared to act on the principle of retaliation, and adopt the course pursued by the United States of America in 1817, when Congress passed a law, the counterpart, if not the copy, of that in the English Statute-book, which was adopted with the declared intention of retaliating on Great Britain.

In the case of the American States, so long as they were dependencies of the British Crown, their ships could trade with all British dependencies on the same footing as our own; but, when they became independent, their ships, like those of any other foreign Power, were excluded from every port where our laws prohibited the entry of such vessels. Previously they could freely trade with the British possessions in America and with the West Indies, with which they had hitherto carried on a profitable intercourse, supplying them with lumber for their houses, staves for their casks, corn, fish, and other provisions, together with horses and cattle for their plantations, besides affording our people there a sure market for their surplus produce of coffee, sugar, and rum.

Up to this period the practice of foreign nations had not very materially complicated our navigation system. If Great Britain, on her part, persisted in refusing to receive, for instance, the produce of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in any but British ships, Spain and Portugal, on their side, declined to send their goods to England in any ships but their own. So that our law in such cases, rigorous as it was, did nothing but determine how a trade, in which we had never had a share, must be carried on, should we be permitted to enter it. But the case of the