governmental act or policy, nor can governments themselves fail to react
to such less evident causes. It is necessary to review the commercial
relations of the two nations--later to examine their political ideals.

In 1783 America won her independence in government from a colonial
status. But commercially she remained a British colony--yet with a
difference. She had formed a part of the British colonial system. All
her normal trade was with the mother country or with other British
colonies. Now her privileges in such trade were at an end, and she must
seek as a favour that which had formerly been hers as a member of the
British Empire. The direct trade between England and America was easily
and quickly resumed, for the commercial classes of both nations desired
it and profited by it. But the British colonial system prohibited trade
between a foreign state and British colonies and there was one channel
of trade, to and from the British West Indies, long very profitable to
both sides, during colonial times, but now legally hampered by American
independence. The New England States had lumber, fish, and farm products
desired by the West Indian planters, and these in turn offered needed
sugar, molasses, and rum. Both parties desired to restore the trade, and
in spite of the legal restrictions of the colonial system, the trade was
in fact resumed in part and either permitted or winked at by the British
Government, but never to the advantageous exchange of former times.

The acute stage of controversy over West Indian trade was not reached
until some thirty years after American Independence, but the uncertainty
of such trade during a long period in which a portion of it consisted
in unauthorized and unregulated exchange was a constant irritant to all
parties concerned. Meanwhile there came the War of 1812 with its
preliminary check upon direct trade to and from Great Britain, and its
final total prohibition of intercourse during the war itself. In 1800