ss than sixty tons
burden. The result was striking. In a few years the American molasses
trade, driven from the British islands, took refuge at San Domingo,
building up a tremendous sugar export and more than filling the place
of the British trade. In 1790 the commerce of San Domingo surpassed
that of all the British Islands together. Here again, French
friendship shone in contrast to English antagonism. Every American
shipowner felt the difference, and remembered it.

With Spain the United States was less successful. Jay, Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, undertook negotiations through Diego Gardoqui, a
Spaniard who, during the Revolution, had furnished many cargoes of
supplies. He {157} found that country sharply dissatisfied over the
boundary assigned to the United States. The British, in ceding Florida
to Spain, had not turned over all of their province of 1763, but had
handed that part of it north of thirty-two degrees to the United
States, and, further, had granted the latter the free navigation of the
Mississippi, through Spanish territory. Gardoqui offered in substance
to make a commercial treaty provided the United States would surrender
the claim to navigate the Mississippi for twenty years. Jay, to whose
mind the interests of the seaboard shipowners and producers far
outweighed the desires of the few settlers of the interior waters, was
willing to make the agreement. But an angry protest went up from the
southern States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he
could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress.
Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote
killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to
intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with
a view to retaining their support.

Further north, the United States found itself mortified and helpless
before British antagonism. After 1783 the country had Canada on its
northern border as a small but actively hostile neighbour, for there
{158} thousands of proscribed and ruined Tories had taken refuge. The
governors of Canada, Carlton and Simcoe, as well as the men commanding
the frontier posts, had served against the Americans and regarded them
as rivals. To secure the western fur trade and to retain a hold over
the western Indians was recognized as the correct and necessary policy
for Canada; and the British government, in response to Canadian
s