A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 2: John Quincy Adams
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 2, part 2: John Quincy Adams
Adams, John Quincy, 1767-1848; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
The session of Congress having terminated without any act upon the
subject, a proclamation was issued on the 17th of March last,
conformably to the provisions of the sixth section of the act of 1st
March, 1823, declaring the fact that the trade and intercourse
authorized by the British act of Parliament of 24th June, 1822, between
the United States and the British enumerated colonial ports had been by
the subsequent acts of Parliament of 5th July, 1825, and the order of
council of 27th July, 1826, prohibited. The effect of this proclamation,
by the terms of the act under which it was issued, has been that each
and every provision of the act concerning navigation of 18th April,
1818, and of the act supplementary thereto of 15th May, 1820, revived
and is in full force. Such, then, is the present condition of the trade
that, useful as it is to both parties, it can, with a single momentary
exception, be carried on directly by the vessels of neither. That
exception itself is found in a proclamation of the governor of the
island of St. Christopher and of the Virgin Islands, inviting for three
months from the 28th of August last the importation of the articles of
the produce of the United States which constitute their export portion
of this trade in the vessels of all nations. That period having already
expired, the state of mutual interdiction has again taken place. The
British Government have not only declined negotiation upon this subject,
but by the principle they have assumed with reference to it have
precluded even the means of negotiation. It becomes not the self-respect
of the United States either to solicit gratuitous favors or to accept as
the grant of a favor that for which an ample equivalent is exacted. It
remains to be determined by the respective Governments whether the trade
shall be opened by acts of reciprocal legislation. It is, in the
meantime, satisfactory to know that apart from the inconveniences
resulting from a disturbance of the usual channels of trade no loss has
been sustained by the commerce, the navigation, or the revenue of the
United States, and none of magnitude is to be apprehended from this
existing state of mutual interdict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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