great quantities of their surplus goods on the American market, selling
them far below cost, or even on extravagant credit terms. One object was
to smash the budding American manufactures.

This action of British merchants naturally stirred some angry patriotic
emotions in the circles where American business suffered and a demand
began to be heard for protection. But the Government of the United
States was still representative of agriculture, in the main, and while a
Tariff Bill was enacted in 1816 that Bill was regarded as a temporary
measure required by the necessity of paying the costs of the recent war.
Just at this juncture, however, British policy, now looking again toward
a great colonial empire, sought advantages for the hitherto neglected
maritime provinces of British North America, and thought that it had
found them by encouragement of their trade with the British West Indies.
The legal status of American trade with the West Indies was now enforced
and for a time intercourse was practically suspended.

This British policy brought to the front the issue of protection in
America. It not only worked against a return by New England from
manufacturing to commerce, but it soon brought into the ranks of
protectionists a northern and western agricultural element that had been
accustomed to sell surplus products to West Indian planters seeking
cheap food-stuffs for their slaves. This new protectionist element was
as yet not crystallized into a clamour for "home markets" for
agriculture, but the pressure of opinion was beginning to be felt, and
by 1820 the question of West Indian trade became one of constant
agitation and demanded political action. That action was taken on lines
of retaliation. Congress in 1818 passed a law excluding from American
ports any British vessel coming from a port access to which was denied
to an American vessel, and placing under bond in American ports British