Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

and other charges; and the profits of our exports were somewhat impaired, and more injuriously transferred from one portion of our citizens to another. The evil effects of the trade upon English commerce became known to the ministers, who declared their conviction, that the interdict had been injurious to the colonies, without being useful to the rest of the empire.

282. In this state of the case, the administration of Mr. Adams closed, and General Jackson came into office. During the presidential canvass, the condition of our commerce with the British colonial ports, became a favourite theme of electioneering rhetoric, and Mr. Adams and his administration were charged, (how falsely we have seen) with having lost the West India trade; as if Mr. Adams had found the United States in the quiet unrestricted enjoyment of commerce, the advantages of which he had contrived or suffered, to be lost, through sheer malignity or folly; and as the case was somewhat complex, and understood by few, there was little difficulty in keeping up the delusion and fostering the ill will it had contributed to excite.

283. It was a point of policy, in the new administration, to make the most of such an opportunity. Hence, the instructions, by Mr. Van Buren, were prepared, manifestly, for effect, on the mind of the President, and on the Jackson party, throughout the country. To gain this point, even the most humiliating means were acceptable. The measures of the preceding administrations were condemned, though approved and sustained by the assembled councils of the nation. The country was declared to be in the wrong, and our representative instructed to solicit, as an inferior and a suppliant, that, as a boon, which the nation had rejected.

The Government of the United States was declared by Mr. Van Buren to have been in the wrong; "1st. In too long and too tenaciously resisting the right of Great Britain to inpose. protecting duties in her own colonies; 2dly, in not relieving her vessels from the restriction of returning direct from the United States to the colonies, after permission had been given, by Great Britain, to our vessels, to clear out from the colonies to any other than a British port; and 3dly, in omitting to accept the terms offered by the Act of Parliament of July, 1825. It is without doubt," continues the Secretary of State, "to the combined operation of these causes that we are to attribute the British interdict. You will, therefore, see the propriety of possessing yourself fully of all the explanatory

you

and mitigating circumstances connected with them, that may be enabled to obviate, as far as practicable, the unfavour able impression which they have produced."

After stating the condition of the trade, and exaggerating, greatly, the disadvantages of its operation on the interests of the United States, Mr. Van Buren proceeds, "It is the anxious wish of the President to put an end to a state of things so injurious to all parties. He is willing to regulate the trade in question upon terms of reciprocal advantage, and to adopt for that purpose those which Great Britain has herself elected, and which are prescribed by Act of Parliament, of 5th July, 1825." Among the arguments, to induce the British Government to grant this favour, is the following, in which, our party dissentions are exhibited to them, and the conduct of the Government of the United States represented, as the act of a party which the nation had judged and condemned, and the present administration as another party, favourable to Great Britain.

"If," says the patriotic Secretary, "the omission of this Government to accept of the terms proposed, when, heretofore, offered, be urged as an objection to their adoption now, it will be your duty to make the British Government sensible of the injustice and inexpediency of such a course.

"The opportunities which you have derived from a participation in our councils, as well as other sources of information, will enable you to speak with confidence (as far as you may deem it proper and useful so to do) of the respective parts taken by those to whom the administration of this Government is now committed, in relation to the course heretofore pursued upon the subject of the colonial trade. Their views of the point have been submitted to the people of the United States; and the councils by which your conduct is now directed, are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts. It should be sufficient, that the claims set up by them, and which caused the interruption of the trade in question, have been explicitly abandoned by those who first asserted them, and are not revived by their successors.* If Great Britain deems it adverse to her interests to allow us to participate in the trade with her colonies, and finds nothing in the extension of it to others to induce her to apply the same rule to us, she will, we hope, be sensible of the propriety of placing her

This was wholly untrue.

refusal on these grounds. To set up the acts of the late administration, as the cause of forfeiture of privileges which would otherwise be extended to the PEOPLE of the United States, would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in itself, and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility. The tone of feeling, which a course so unwise and untenable is calculated to produce, would, doubtless, be greatly aggravated by the conscientiousness, that Great Britain has, by order in Council, opened her colonial ports to Russia and France, notwithstanding a similar omission, on their part, to accept the terms offered by the act of July, 1825.”

"You cannot press this view of the subject too earnestly upon the consideration of the British ministry. It has bearings and relations that reach beyond the immediate question under discussion."

284. There is not, perhaps, in the history of diplomacy, a parallel for these instructions. The minister is sent, to confess that his Government had been in the wrong, to declare that, the agents who had been auxiliary to the wrong, had been condemned and discarded, and to solicit for a party, just come into power, a favour which they merited from their kind feelings to Great Britain.

285. Such a course, and such arguments, might be permitted to almost any man, rather than to Mr. Van Buren; for, he not only knew, but averred, distinctly, what propriety in this very case of diplomacy required. In discussing the subject, in Senate, 24th February, 1827, he remarked;

"In a Government like ours, founded on freedom of thought and action, imposing no necessary restraints, and calling into exercise the highest energies of the mind, occasional differences of opinion are not only to be expected, but to be desired. But, this conflict of opinion should be confined to subjects which concern ourselves. In the collisions which may arise between the United States and a foreign power, it is our duty to present an unbroken front. Domestic differences, if they tend to give encouragement to unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or deferred; and the cause of our Government must be considered as the cause of our country." Again; "The humiliating spectacle of a foreign government speculating for the advantage which it may derive from our dissensions, will, I trust, never again be the re proach of the American people."

And as the alleged ground of the censure, in the instructions, was that the late administration had not at once adopt

ed Mr. Canning's views of the subject, the following passage from the same speech, is yet more condemnatory of Mr. Van Buren's course; for, said he, "If we direct our attention to the ground which Mr. Canning has assumed, there can be, on this side of the Atlantic, no difference of opinion. It is indefensible in its principle, and unjust in its application."

The propositions with which Mr. McLane was charged, were identical, or, in his own phrase, coincident, with those proffered by Mr. Gallatin, and which had been rejected; but, the style in which they were respectively made, was essentially different. Mr. McLane went to the extent of his instructions, and his humility and deference towards the British authority, obtained for him, in the court circles, the character, if not of an able man, at least, of a "good fellow,"-the least enviable reputation, we should think, a diplomatist should desire.

In the most prolix of all diplomatic addresses on record, he speaks of the reasonableness of his demands, prays for a decision-solicits the earliest convenient answer-regrets that ancient prejudices,-admits that the measures of the United States had contributed to produce the present evil-has no disposition to deny the injurious effects on the commercial enterprize of his country-trusts to be excused for recurring to some of his own arguments-calls this, his application for an early decision-speaks of favour expected-of the PRETENSIONS of the American Government, or rather (for his phrase is even worse) of AMERICAN PRETENSIONS, advanced in previous years, but now disclaimed by him; and of the improvident legislation; asks that the United States may be permitted to contribute supplies to the Islands-begs leave further to say, &c., and hopes to be excused for asking Lord Aberdeen, to consider, &c.-Hopes for a favourable decision, and repeats his deep solicitude for the result. And, instead of conforming literally to the most offensive portion of his instructions, putting the present application, and past omission, upon party grounds, he adopts phrases not applicable to the conduct of a few individuals, but declaring, that the claims advanced in justification of the conduct of the United States, had been abandoned, &c. There are other strongly offensive points in Mr. McLane's correspondence, but our business is not, at present, with him; and he may, perhaps, find a shield in his instructions.

Besides these, of the instructions, other humiliating means of caiolerie were put in use. In his Congressional Message

L

of 1829, the President was made to say, of the British Government: " Distinguished alike in peace and in war, EVERY THING in the condition and history of that country is calculated to command our RESPECT." No President had ever said any thing like this. The Quarterly review could say no more, and would not say so much. It is almost universally admitted that some incidents in the history of England might be forgotten, without detriment to the national character. Mr. McLane was instructed to communicate this adulation, with a view to help the negotiation. "It is to be hoped,' says Mr. Van Buren, "that the President's message will aid the liberal views which the principal members of the British Cabinet are understood to entertain," &c.

286. But, up to May, 1830, all these, and other efforts were useless. On the 27th of that month, the President by a confidential communication, asked Congress to place his propositions in the shape of a law, which having been drawn up under the inspection of the Cabinet, was presented by Mr. Cambreleng, the known adjective of Mr. Van Buren. In recommending the bill Mr. C. declared, that, it "contained no new principle," but corresponded, precisely, with the instructions of Mr. Clay to Mr. Gallatin; and with this understanding the bill passed almost, unanimously, in both Houses; and, thus, whatever may have been the pretensions or concessions of the former administration, it is manifest that by this act, they were approved and ratified by Congress, and recommended for permanent adoption by the fiercest enemies of Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams. But, notwithstanding Congress had thus taken the negotiation into their own hands and determined to renew the propositions of Mr. Clay, maintaining the principle of reciprocity with the utmost strictness, that principle was surrendered, and the law frustrated.

287. Mr. Cambreleng's act provided, that when the President should be satisfied; 1. That the British would open their colonial ports; 2. That American vessels and their cargoes might enter them, free from alien duties; 3. That such vessels might carry to such ports, from the United States, any articles which might be imported in a British vessel, from the United States, into such ports; 4.. That American vessels might export, from British colonial ports, any article, exportable, therefrom, in a British vessel, and to any country, other than the British dominions; and 5. That the commercial intercoure of the United States with all the other parts of the British dominions, remain on a footing not less favourable to

« AnteriorContinua »