nnage. The numbers of
native seamen were likewise inadequate, through the heavy demands of
the Navy for men. The concurrence of neutrals was imperative. Under
the conditions it was no slight advantage to have the islands supplied
and the American market retained, by the services of American vessels,
leaving to British the monopoly of direct carrying between the
colonies and Europe.

Although vexations to neutrals incident to a state of war continued
subsequent to this treaty, they turned upon points of construction and
practice rather than upon principle. Negotiation was continuous; and
in September, 1800, towards the close of Adams's administration, Mr.
John Marshall, then Secretary of State, summed up existing complaints
of commercial injury under three heads,--definitions of contraband,
methods of blockade, and the unjust decisions of Vice-Admiralty
Courts; coupled with the absence of penalty to cruisers making
unwarranted captures, which emboldened them to seize on any ground,
because certain to escape punishment. But no formal pronouncement
further injurious to United States commerce was made by the British
Government during this war, which ended in October, 1801, to be
renewed eighteen months later. On the contrary, the progress of events
in the West Indies, by its favorable effect upon British commerce,
assisted Pitt in taking the more liberal measures to which by
conviction he was always inclined. The destruction of Haiti as a
French colony, and to a great degree as a producer of sugar and
coffee, by eliminating one principal source of the world's supply,
raised values throughout the remaining Caribbean; while the capture of
almost all the French and Dutch possessions threw their commerce and
navigation into the hands of Great Britain. In this swelling
prosperity the British planter, the British carrier, and the British
merchant at home all shared, and so bore without apparent grudging the
issuance of an Order, in January, 1798, which extended to European
neutrals the concession, made in 1795 to the United States, of
carrying West Indian produce direct from the islands to their own
country, or to Great Britain; not, however, to a hostile port, or to
any other neutral territory than their own.

Although this Order in no way altered the existing status of the
United States, it was embraced in a list of British measures affecting
commerce,[114] transmitted to Congress in 1808. From the American
standpoint this w