Alfred Thayer Mahan - Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1

The suspension of intercourse during the War of Independence had brought the economical relations into stronger relief, and accomplished independence threatened the speedy realization of their tendencies. There were two principal dangers dreaded by Great Britain. The West India plantation industry had depended upon the continental colonies for food supplies, and to a considerable extent also financially; because these alone were the consumers of one important product—rum. Again, ship-building and the carrying trade of the empire had passed largely into the hands of the continental colonists, keeping on that side of the Atlantic, it was asserted, a great number of British-born seamen. While vessels from America visited many parts of the world, the custom-house returns showed that of the total inward and outward tonnage of the thirteen colonies, over sixty per cent had been either coastwise or with the West Indies; and this left out of account the considerable number engaged in smuggling. Of the remainder, barely twenty-five per cent went to Great Britain or Ireland. In short, there had been building upon the western side of the ocean, under the colonial connection, a rival maritime system, having its own products, its own special markets, and its own carrying trade. The latter also, being done by very small vessels, adapted to the short transit, had created for itself, or absorbed from elsewhere, a separate and proportionately large maritime population, rivalling that of the home country, while yet remaining out of easy reach of impressment and remote from immediate interest in European wars. One chief object of the Navigation Act was thus thwarted; and indeed, as might be anticipated from quotations already made, it was upon this that British watchfulness more particularly centred. As far as possible all interchange was to be internal to the empire, a kind of coasting trade, which would naturally, as well as by statute, fall to British shipping. Protective regulation therefore should develop in the several parts those productions which other parts needed,—the material of commerce; but where this could not be done, and supplies must be sought outside, they should go and come in British vessels, navigated according to the Act. "Our country," wrote Sheffield, in concluding his work, "does not entirely depend upon the monopoly of the commerce of the thirteen American states, and it is by no means necessary to sacrifice any part of our carrying trade for imaginary advantages never to be attained." 63 63 p. 288.

A further injury was done by the cheapness with which the Americans built and sold ships, owing to their abundance of timber. They built them not only to order, but as it were for a market. Although acceptable to the mercantile interest, and even indirectly beneficial by sparing the resources for building ships of war, this was an invasion of the manufacturing industry of the kingdom, in a particular peculiarly conducive to naval power. The returns of the British underwriters for twenty-seven shipping ports of Great Britain and Ireland, during a series of years immediately preceding the American revolt, no ship being counted twice, showed the British-built vessels entered to be 3,908, and the American 2,311. 64 64 Coxe, View of the United States, p. 346. The tonnage of the latter was more than one-third of the total. The intercourse between the American continent and the West Indies, not included in this reckoning, was almost wholly in American bottoms. The proportion of American-built shipping in the total of the empire is hence apparent, as well as the growth of the ship-building industry. This of course was accompanied by a tendency of mechanics, as well as seamen, to remove to a situation so favorable for employment. But the maintenance of home facilities for building ships was as essential to the development of naval power as was the fostering of a class of seamen. In this respect, therefore, the ship-building of America was detrimental to the objects of the Navigation Act; and the evil threatened to increase, because of a discernible approaching shortness of suitable timber in the overtaxed forests of Europe.

Such being the apparent tendency of things, owing to circumstances relatively permanent in character, the habit of mind traditional with British merchants and statesmen, formed by the accepted colonial and mercantile systems, impelled them at once to prohibitory measures of counteraction, as soon as the colonies, naturally rival, had become by independence a foreign nation. For a moment, indeed, it appeared that broader views might prevail, based upon a sounder understanding of actual conditions and of the principles of international commerce. The second William Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time the provisional articles of peace with the United States were signed, in November, 1782; and in March, 1783, he introduced into the House of Commons a bill for regulating temporarily the intercourse between the two nations, so far as dependent upon the action of Great Britain, until it should be possible to establish a mutual arrangement by treaty. This measure reflected not only a general attitude of good will towards America, characteristic of both father and son, but also the impression which had been made upon the younger man by the writings of Adam Smith. Professing as its objects "to establish intercourse on the most enlarged principles of reciprocal benefit," and "to evince the disposition of Great Britain to be on terms of most perfect amity with the United States of America," the bill admitted the ships and vessels of the United States, with the merchandise on board, into all the ports of Great Britain in the same manner as the vessels of other independent states; that is, manned three-fourths by American seamen. This preserved the main restrictions of the Navigation Act, protective of British navigation; but the merchandise, even if brought in American ships, was relieved of all alien duties. These, however, wherever still existing for other nations, were light, and this remission slight; 65 65 Reeves, p. 381. Nevertheless, foreign nations frequently complained of this as a distinction against them (Report of the Committee of the Privy Council, Jan. 28, 1791, p. 10). a more substantial concession was a rebate upon all exports from Great Britain to the United States, equal to that allowed upon goods exported to the colonies. As regarded intercourse with the West Indies, there was to be made in favor of the thirteen states a special and large remission in the rigor of the Act; one affecting both commerce and navigation. To British colonies, by long-standing proscription, no ships except British had been admitted to export or import. By the proposed measure, the United States, alone among the nations of the world, were to be allowed to import freely any goods whatsoever, of their own growth, produce, or manufacture, in their own ships; on the same terms exactly as British vessels, if these should engage in the traffic between the American continent and the islands. Similarly, freedom to export colonial produce was granted to American bottoms from the West Indies to the United States. Both exports and imports, thus to be authorized, were to be "liable to the same duties and charges only as the same merchandise would be subject to, if it were the property of British native-born subjects, and imported in British ships, navigated by British seamen." 66 66 Bryan Edwards, West Indies, vol. ii. p. 494 (note). In short, while the primary purpose doubtless was the benefit of the islands, the effect of the measure, as regarded the West India trade, was to restore the citizens of the now independent states to the privileges they had enjoyed as colonists. The carrying trade between the islands and the continent was conceded to them, and past experience gave ground to believe it would be by them absorbed.