The carrying-trade between the French West Indies and Europe which had thus fallen into American hands, added to the natural increase of national exports and imports, required a large amount of additional shipping; and what was more directly hostile to English interests, it drew great numbers of British sailors into the American merchant-service. The desertion of British seamen and the systematic encouragement offered to deserters in every seaport of the Union were serious annoyances, which the American government was unable to excuse or correct. Between 1793 and 1801 they reached the proportions of a grave danger to the British service. Every British government packet which entered the port of New York during the winter before Jefferson’s accession to power lost almost every seaman in its crew; and neither people nor magistrates often lent help to recover them. At Norfolk the crew of a British ship deserted to an American sloop-of-war, whose commander, while admitting the fact, refused to restore the men, alleging his construction of official orders in his excuse.[233] In most American harbors such protection as the British shipmaster obtained sprang from the personal good-will of magistrates, who without strict legal authority consented to apply, for the benefit of the foreign master, the merchant-shipping law of the United States; but in one serious case even this voluntary assistance was stopped by the authority of a State government. This interference was due to the once famous dispute over Jonathan Robbins, which convulsed party politics in America during the heated election of 1800. Thomas Nash, a boatswain on the British frigate “Hermione,” having been ringleader in conspiracy and murder on the high seas, was afterward identified in the United States under the name and with the papers of Jonathan Robbins of Danbury, in Connecticut. On a requisition from the British minister, dated June 3, 1799, he was delivered under the extradition clause of Jay’s treaty, and was hung. The Republican party, then in opposition, declared that Robbins, or Nash, was in their belief an American citizen whose surrender was an act of base subservience to Great Britain. An effigy of Robbins hanging to a gibbet was a favorite electioneering device at public meetings. The State of Virginia, having a similar grievance of its own, went so far as to enact a law[234] which forbade, under the severest penalties, any magistrate who acted under authority of the State to be instrumental in transporting any person out of its jurisdiction. As citizens of the Union, sworn to support the Constitution, such magistrates were equally bound with the Federal judges to grant warrants of commitment, under the Twenty-seventh Article of Jay’s treaty, against persons accused of specified crimes. The Virginia Act directly contravened the treaty; while indirectly it prevented magistrates from granting warrants against deserters and holding them