carrier, and merchant might hope that
British West India produce could compete; although various changes of
conditions in the West Indies, and Bonaparte's efforts at the
exclusion of British products from the continent, had greatly reduced
their market there from the fair proportions of the former war. In the
cases brought before Sir William Scott, however, it was found that the
duties paid for admission to the United States were almost wholly
released, by drawback, on re-exportation; so that the articles were
brought to the continental consumer relieved of this principal element
of cost. He therefore ruled that they had not complied with the
conditions of an actual importation; that the articles had not lost
their belligerent character; and that the carriage to Europe was by
direct voyage, not interrupted by an importation. The vessels were
therefore condemned.

The immediate point thus decided was one of construction, and in
particular detail hitherto unsettled. The law adviser of the Crown had
stated in 1801, as an accepted precedent, "that landing the goods and
paying the duties in the neutral country breaks the continuity of the
voyage;"[120] but the circumstance of drawback, which belonged to the
municipal prerogative of the independent neutral state, had not then
been considered. The foundation on which all rested was the principle
of 1756. The underlying motive for the new action taken--the
protection of a British traffic--linked the War of 1812 with the
conditions of colonial dependence of the United States, which was a
matter of recent memory to men of both countries still in the vigor of
life. The American found again exerted over his national commerce a
control indistinguishable in practice from that of colonial days; from
what port his ships should sail, whither they might go, what cargoes
they might carry, under what rules be governed in their own ports,
were dictated to him as absolutely, if not in as extensive detail, as
before the War of Independence. The British Government placed itself
in the old attitude of a sovereign authority, regulating the commerce
of a dependency with an avowed view to the interest of the mother
country. This motive was identical with that of colonial
administration; the particular form taken being dictated, of course,
then as before, by the exigencies of the moment,--by a "consideration
of the present state of the commerce of this country." Messrs. Monroe
and Pinkney, who we