Trade between England and America and the West Indies re-opened.
Although the political connection of Great Britain
with the United States of America had been violently
rent asunder, there happily remained between
the two countries the bonds of one common origin,
language, religion, and mutual interest. No sooner
had American independence been acknowledged than
all prohibitory regulations made during the war
were abolished. Indeed, for a time, no manifest or
any other shipping document was required from any
vessel of the United States ariving at or clearing out
from a British port; and the Crown being meanwhile
authorised to regulate the manner in which trade
should be carried on, a royal proclamation was immediately
issued on the 14th of March, 1783, for the
admission, till further orders, into the ports of Great
Britain, of any unmanufactured commodities, the
produce of the United States, either in British or
American ships, without the usual certificates, and
on payment of the same duties as were payable on
similar articles imported from British America. The
same drawbacks and bounties were also allowed on
goods coming from the United States as on those
from the British possessions; and the benefit of the
order was extended to all American vessels that had
arrived since the 20th of January.
These concessions, however, neither gave satisfaction to the American shipowners, nor to the English sticklers for the Navigation Act in all its force. A controversy arose respecting the extent of commercial
- [Footnote: out is said to have been four hundred males and sixty women. As a
settlement, Sierra Leone has met with indifferent success, and it has been attacked more than once by the French and the neighbouring Ashantees. The climate is peculiarly deadly to European constitutions (Macpherson, iv. pp. 128 and 223).]
