ut how far such applications should go in this
direction or that. When the American Intercourse Bill was before the
House in 1783, one of Lord Shelburne's colleagues in the Ministry,
William Eden, approached Smith in considerable perplexity as to the
wisdom of conceding to the new republic free commercial intercourse
with this country and our colonies. Eden had already done something
for free trade in Ireland, and he was presently to earn a name as a
great champion of that principle, after successfully negotiating with
Dupont de Nemours the Commercial Treaty with France in 1786; but in
1787 he had not accepted the principle so completely as his chief,
Lord Shelburne. Perhaps, indeed, he never took a firm hold of the
principle at any time, for Smith always said of him, "He is but a man
of detail."[325] Anyhow, when he wrote Smith in 1783 he was under
serious alarm at the proposal to give the United States the same
freedom to trade with Canada and Nova Scotia as we enjoyed ourselves.
Being so near those colonies, the States would be sure to oust Great
Britain and Ireland entirely out of the trade of provisioning them.
The Irish fisheries would be ruined, the English carrying trade would
be lost. The Americans, with fur at their doors, could easily beat us
in hats, and if we allowed them to import our tools free, they would
beat us in everything else for which they had the raw materials in
plenty. Eden and Smith seem to have exchanged several letters on this
subject, but none of them remain except the following one from Smith,
in which he declares that it would be an injustice to our own colonies
to restrict their trade with the United States merely to benefit Irish
fish-curers or English hatters, and to be bad policy to impose special
discouragements on the trade of one foreign nation which are not
imposed on the trade of others. His argument is not, it will be
observed, for free trade, which he perhaps thought then impracticable,
but merely for equality of treatment,--equality of treatment between
the British subject in Canada and the British subject in England, and
equality of treatment between the American nation and the Russian, or
French, or Spanish.

DEAR SIR--If the Americans really mean to subject the goods
of all different nations to the same duties and to grant
them the same indulgence, they set an example of good sense
which all other nations ought to imitate. At any rate it is
certain