for the United States to enter into commercial treaties with
foreign countries. These treaties, however, were not fruitful of
any great result; for, "with unimportant exceptions, they left
still in force the high import duties and prohibitions that
marked the European tariffs of the time, as well as many features
of the old colonial system. They were designed to legalize
commerce rather than to encourage it."* Still, for a year or more
after the war the demand for American products was great enough
to satisfy almost everybody. But in 1784 France and Spain closed
their colonial ports and thus excluded the shipping of the United
States. This proved to be so disastrous for their colonies that
the French Government soon was forced to relax its restrictions.
The British also made some concessions, and where their orders
were not modified they were evaded. And so, in the course of a
few years, the West India trade recovered.

* Clive Day, "Encyclopedia of American Government," Vol. I, p.
340.


More astonishing to the men of that time than it is to us was the
fact that American foreign trade fell under British commercial
control again. Whether it was that British merchants were
accustomed to American ways of doing things and knew American
business conditions; whether other countries found the commerce
not as profitable as they had expected, as certainly was the case
with France; whether "American merchants and sea captains found
themselves under disadvantages due to the absence of treaty
protection which they had enjoyed as English subjects";* or
whether it was the necessity of trading on British