readily as with the British subject; and, what
was quite unpardonable in the ideas of that time, after selling a
cargo in a West Indian port, instead of reloading there, they would
take the hard cash of the island to a French neighbor, buying of him
molasses to be made into rum at home. In this commercial shrewdness
the danger was not so much in the local loss, or in the single
transaction, for in the commercial supremacy of England the money was
pretty sure to find its way back to the old country. The sting was
that the sharp commercial instinct, roving from port to port, with a
keen scent for freight and for bargains, maintained a close rivalry
for the carrying trade, which was doubly severe from the natural
advantages of the shipping and the natural aptitudes of the
ship-owners. Already the economical attention of the New Englanders to
the details of their shipping business had been noted, and had earned
for them the name of the Dutchmen of North America; an epithet than
which there was then none more ominous to British ears, and especially
where with the carrying trade was associated the twin idea of a
nursery of seamen for the British Navy.

A fair appreciation of the facts and relations, summarized in the
preceding pages from an infinitude of details, is necessary to a
correct view of the origin and course of the misunderstandings and
disagreements which finally led to the War of 1812. In 1783, the
restoration of peace and the acknowledgment of the independence of the
former colonies removed from commerce the restrictions incident to
hostilities, and replaced in full action, essentially unchanged, the
natural conditions which had guided the course of trade in colonial
days. The old country, retaining all the prepossessions associated
with the now venerable and venerated Navigation Act, saw herself
confronted with the revival of a commercial system, a commercial
independence, of which she had before been jealous, and which could no
longer be controlled by political dependence. It was to be feared that
supplying the British West Indies would increase American shipping,
and that British seamen would more and more escape into it, with
consequent loss to British navigation, both in tonnage and men, and
discouragement to British maritime industries. Hence, by the ideas of
the time, was to be apprehended weakness for war, unless some
effective check could be devised.

What would have been the issue of these anxieties,