gramme. In other
directions they were not so successful. The British still believed in
their colonial system and applied its principles without regard to the
interests of the United States. Such American products as they wanted
they allowed to be carried to British markets, but in British vessels.
Certain commodities, the production of which they wished to encourage
within their own dominions, they added to the prohibited list. Americans
cried out indignantly that this was an attempt on the part of the
British to punish their former colonies for their temerity in revolting.
The British Government may well have derived some satisfaction from the
fact that certain restrictions bore heavily upon New England, as John
Adams complained; but it would seem to be much nearer the truth to
say that in a truly characteristic way the British were phlegmatically
attending to their own interests and calmly ignoring the United States,
and that there was little malice in their policy.

European nations had regarded American trade as a profitable field
of enterprise and as probably responsible for much of Great Britain's
prosperity. It was therefore a relatively easy matter for the United
States to enter into commercial treaties with foreign countries. These
treaties, however, were not fruitful of any great result; for, "with
unimportant exceptions, they left still in force the high import duties
and prohibitions that marked the European tariffs of the time, as well
as many features of the old colonial system. They were designed to
legalize commerce rather than to encourage it."* Still, for a year or
more after the war the demand for American products was great enough
to satisfy almost everybody. But in 1784 France and Spain closed their
colonial ports and thus excluded the shipping of the United States. This
proved to be so disastrous for their colonies that the French Government
soon was forced to relax its restrictions. The British also made some
concessions, and where their orders were not modified they were evaded.
And so, in the course of a few years, the West India trade recovered.

* Clive Day, "Encyclopedia of American Government," Vol. I,
p. 340.

More astonishing to the men of that time than it is to us was the fact
that American foreign trade fell under British commercial control again.
Whether it was that British merchants were accustomed to American ways
of doing things and knew American business conditions;