Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/91

 was issued on the 27th July, 1826, reciting that the conditions laid down by the Possessions Act, 6 Geo. IV., cap. 114, had not been fulfilled, that is to say, that the United States had not reciprocated the privileges Great Britain had granted to American ships, and that, therefore, the privileges possessed by American vessels of importing the produce of their country into British possessions abroad, and of exporting the produce of those possessions to any foreign country whatever, would cease on certain dates fixed in the following year. As might have been anticipated, the President issued, on the 17th March, 1827, a proclamation prohibiting the trade and intercourse with the British possessions authorised by the Act of Congress of 1st March, 1823.

Happily, however, these retaliatory measures did not remain long in force; and, after various negotiations, it was enacted by the American Congress on the 29th May, 1830, that, whenever the President should have evidence that Great Britain would open the ports of her colonial possessions in the West Indies, South America, and the Bermudas, for a limited or indefinite time to United States ships, at the same rate of impost and tonnage and with the same cargoes as British vessels, and that they would be allowed to export from such British possessions to any country whatever any article which could be exported in British vessels, leaving any other intercourse with Great Britain in other respects as it then was, he might grant similar privileges to British vessels coming from the said possessions to the United States. This conciliatory measure was followed on October 5th, 1830, by a proclamation from the Presi