Negotiations of the highest importance to our common interests
have been for several years in discussion between the two Governments,
and on the part of the United States have been invariably pursued in the
spirit of candor and conciliation. Interests of great magnitude and
delicacy had been adjusted by the conventions of 1815 and 1818, while
that of 1822, mediated by the late Emperor Alexander, had promised a
satisfactory compromise of claims which the Government of the United
States, in justice to the rights of a numerous class of their citizens,
was bound to sustain. But with regard to the commercial intercourse
between the United States and the British colonies in America, it has
been hitherto found impracticable to bring the parties to an
understanding satisfactory to both. The relative geographical position
and the respective products of nature cultivated by human industry had
constituted the elements of a commercial intercourse between the United
States and British America, insular and continental, important to the
inhabitants of both countries; but it had been interdicted by Great
Britain upon a principle heretofore practiced upon by the colonizing
nations of Europe, of holding the trade of their colonies each in
exclusive monopoly to herself.
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