It
has been at once ascribed to a mere recurrence to the old,
long-established principle of colonial monopoly and at the same time to
a feeling of resentment because the offers of an act of Parliament
opening the colonial ports upon certain conditions had not been grasped
at with sufficient eagerness by an instantaneous conformity to them. At
a subsequent period it has been intimated that the new exclusion was in
resentment because a prior act of Parliament, of 1822, opening certain
colonial ports, under heavy and burdensome restrictions, to vessels of
the United States, had not been reciprocated by an admission of British
vessels from the colonies, and their cargoes, without any restriction or
discrimination whatever. But be the motive for the interdiction what it
may, the British Government have manifested no disposition, either by
negotiation or by corresponding legislative enactments, to recede from
it, and we have been given distinctly to understand that neither of the
bills which were under the consideration of Congress at their last
session would have been deemed sufficient in their concessions to have
been rewarded by any relaxation from the British interdict.
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