Keeping in mind this mental attitude, recall the fact that a command of the sea was then absolutely essential to the well-being of the British people, and further, that the supremacy which the British then boasted had been obtained, and maintained for a century, by good hard fighting; and further still, that many British thinkers had been alarmed at such American progress as had been manifested even a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. Bluntly stated, while the British people had learned to hate the American, they suddenly saw that he alone had shown an ability to dispute that supremacy upon the sea which seemed absolutely necessary for the preservation of their national existence. And as an independent citizen of the world he was in a position to force the issue. It follows, therefore, that the British were naturally led to do all they could to oppose all progress in the United States. The "ruinous restrictions" of which the Charleston ship-builders made mention were a natural sequence of the success of the Revolution. While the British were thus hostile upon the sea (they were also holding American territory in the West, and inciting the Indians to war), the French and the Spanish were united in an effort to cut off all that part of the United States west of the Appalachians. For civilization was then in the primitive state where men, though they talked about international law, were guided only by unenlightened selfishness, and acknowledged no other court of appeal than that afforded by the sword. The story of foreign aggressions upon American shipping and commerce will be told in the next chapter, but by way of illustrating conditions in the years following the Revolution, consider one fact regarding the British work of opposition. All American trade with the British West Indies was forbidden, and so strictly was this regulation enforced that thousands of slaves starved to death in those islands for want of the "refuse fish" and other food which the planters had been accustomed to obtain from America; and even some of the poorer white people died for the same reason. Because of ruined industries, and of a chaotic government at home, and of the ruthless opposition of the nations of Europe, the condition of the people of the United States seemed almost hopeless. So great was the depression of the seafaring part of the population, indeed, that even the optimistic whalers of Nantucket thought about removing their industry to France, and many of them did migrate. And yet it was in this period of deepest gloom that the American merchant marine first reached out for the trade of the Far East. In the _Journals of Congress_ for 1784 (p. 333) is a paragraph referring to "a letter of the 23d December, 1783, from Daniel Parker, stating, that a ship called the '_Empress of China_' will shortly sail from New York for Canton in China, under the command of Captain John Green, and requesting sea-letters."[5]