the principles set forth by Lord
Sheffield. Pitt, while Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne,
introduced a very liberal Bill, which, if enacted, would have secured
full commercial reciprocity, including the West India trade. This
failed to pass, however, and was abandoned when Pitt left office in
April, 1783. The Fox-North Ministry followed a different plan by
causing Parliament to pass a Bill authorizing the Crown to regulate the
trade with the West Indies. They then, by proclamation, allowed the
islands to import certain articles from the United States, not
including fish or lumber, and {155} only in British bottoms. It was
hoped that Canada would take the place of the United States in
supplying the West India colonies, and that British vessels would
monopolize the carrying. In 1787 this action was ratified by
Parliament, and the process of discouraging American shipping was
adopted as a national policy. American vessels henceforward came under
the terms of the Navigation Acts, and could take part only in the
direct trade between their own country and England. When John Adams,
in 1785, arrived at London as Minister, and tried to open the subject
of a commercial treaty, he was unable to secure the slightest attention
to the American requests and felt himself to be in an atmosphere of
hostility and social contempt. The British policy proved in a few
years fairly successful. It reduced American shipping trading with
England, it drove American vessels from the British West Indies, and,
owing to the impossibility of the States retaliating separately, it did
not diminish the British market in America. Up to 1789, when the first
Congress of the United States passed a navigation act and adopted
discriminating duties, America remained commercially helpless. The
profit went to British shipowners and merchants.

The American government naturally {156} turned to the other powers
having American possessions, France and Spain, hoping to secure from
them compensating advantages. So far as France was concerned, the
government of Louis XVI was friendly; but its finances were in such
confusion and its administration so unsteady after 1783 that Jefferson,
Minister to France, could secure no important concessions save one. In
1784, as though to step into the place left vacant by the English, the
French crown, by royal order, permitted direct trade between the United
States and the French West Indies in vessels of le