The Americans, while colonists of Great Britain, had enjoyed, as
subjects, almost the entire trade between their country and our West
India Islands. Having erected themselves into independent states, they
had hoped that, on the return of peace, we should have permitted them
again to enjoy the privileges of fellow-subjects, which they had, by
withdrawing their allegiance, undoubtedly forfeited. This hope had not
been indulged, by the Americans, through any want of political
discernment on their part; they well knew themselves now to be, what on
other occasions they loudly enough boasted, foreigners in every sense of
the word. They were satisfied, however, at the same time, that the
mother-country had not always been renowned for the highest degree of
national sagacity; they felt, that they had themselves acquired, by
force, the independence which they enjoyed; and they trusted that the
British administration, through apprehensions of renewing an unpopular
and disastrous war, would be induced to connive at, if not confirm, the
privilege the Americans affected to claim under the very Navigation Act
of Great Britain, the most beneficial effect of which they were thus
artfully contriving to destroy.

The West Indians, themselves, who were prevented, by an immediate
prospect of the return of their own interest, from contemplating it in a
remote view, they well knew, would oppose no obstacle: these, in fact,
readily fell into the snare, and were clamorous for their old customers.
Those persons, too, who held official situations, generally more
considerate of their ease and their emoluments, than of the duties
proper to be performed, in a climate so enervating, and a country so
luxurious, would naturally, it was not doubted, rather contend for,
than against, such claims as seemed to favour these indulgences. Here,
too, with very few exceptions, they met with equally zealous and still
more powerful supporters.

The governors and custom-house officers, in fact, agreed that, by the
Navigation Act, the Americans had a right to trade with all our West
India islands; and the merchants and planters, who likewise found it for
their present interest to embrace the same doctrine, pretended that they
were of the same opinion.

Captain Nelson, in the mean time, ever as studious to acquire a due
knowledge of the full extent of his professional duties, as zealously
determined completely to perform the utmost that they could possibly
r