rights to be conceded permanently to the United States, the practical point in dispute at the time being whether the Navigation Act should be held to apply to American shipping as fully as it did to other foreign vessels, and should thus exclude them from the English West India Islands. But their claim to be treated upon a more favoured footing than other nations was deemed untenable, though an exemption in their favour was urged in this particular case upon the general grounds of expediency. The shipowners, however, of Great Britain upheld the Navigation Act as the palladium of their naval power, and urged that a people who had renounced their allegiance to the mother-country could have no right to any special favour. Much agitation was also raised by the West India planters, who asserted that the prosperity of those islands depended on an unrestricted intercourse with America; and as their influence was powerful in parliament, ministers were on the point of yielding to the clamour; at least they connived with the governors of some of the West India Islands in permitting the free access of American vessels to their ports.
A pamphlet by Lord Sheffield,[1] and another by Mr. Chalmers,[2] urged that the remaining loyal continental colonies sufficed to supply the British West India Islands with lumber and provisions, which the advocates on the opposite side of the question denied. Great discussions arose, in which all the controverted points of free trade and exclusion were again urged
