With all the rest we have free trade, even with the insular
colonies of all the European nations, except Great Britain. Her
Government also had manifested approaches to the adoption of a free and
liberal intercourse between her colonies and other nations, though by a
sudden and scarcely explained revulsion the spirit of exclusion has been
revived for operation upon the United States alone.
The conclusion of our last treaty of peace with Great Britain was
shortly afterwards followed by a commercial convention, placing the
direct intercourse between the two countries upon a footing of more
equal reciprocity than had ever before been admitted. The same principle
has since been much further extended by treaties with France, Sweden,
Denmark, the Hanseatic cities, Prussia, in Europe, and with the
Republics of Colombia and of Central America, in this hemisphere. The
mutual abolition of discriminating duties and charges upon the
navigation and commercial intercourse between the parties is the general
maxim which characterizes them all. There is reason to expect that it
will at no distant period be adopted by other nations, both of Europe
and America, and to hope that by its universal prevalence one of the
fruitful sources of wars of commercial competition will be extinguished.
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