ue chiefly to the cessation
of communications with the revolted colonies, entailing failure of
supplies indispensable to their industries. Despite certain
alleviations incidental to the war, such as the capture of American
vessels bound to foreign islands, and the demand for tropical products
by the British armies and fleets, there had been great misery among
the population, as well as financial loss. The restoration of
commercial intercourse would benefit the continent as well as the
islands; but the latter more. The prosperity of both would redound to
the welfare of Great Britain; for the one, though now politically
independent, was chained to her commercial system by imperative
circumstances, while of the trade of the other she would have complete
monopoly, except for this tolerance of a strictly local traffic with
the adjoining continent. As for British navigation, the supreme
interest, Pitt believed that it would receive more enlargement from
the increase of productiveness in the islands, and of consequent
demand for British manufactures, than it would suffer loss by American
navigation. More commerce, more ships. Then, as at the present day,
the interests of Great Britain and of the United States, in their
relations to a matter of common external concern, were not opposed,
but complementary; for the prosperity of the islands through America
would make for the prosperity of Great Britain through the islands.

This, however, was just the point disputed; and, in default of the
experience which the coming years were to furnish, fears not wholly
unreasonable, from the particular point of view of sea power, as then
understood, were aroused by the known facts of American shipping
enterprise, both as ship-builders and carriers, even under colonial
trammels. John Adams, who was minister to Great Britain from 1785 to
1788, had frequent cause to note the deep and general apprehension
there entertained of the United States as a rival maritime state. The
question of admission to the colonial trade, as it presented itself to
most men of the day, was one of defence and of offence, and was
complicated by several considerations. As a matter of fact, there was
no denying the existence of that transatlantic commercial system, in
which the former colonies had been so conspicuous a factor, the sole
source of certain supplies to an important market, reflecting therein
exactly Great Britain's own position relatively to the consumers of