had criticised the administration then in power for its omission to accept the conditions specified in the act of Parliament of 1825. The views which he then expressed he embodied, on July 20, 1829, in an instruction to McLane. In concluding a long and able review of the controversy with Great Britain, Van Buren declared that there were three grounds on which the United States was assailable. The first was "in our too long and too tenaciously resisting the right of Great Britain to impose protecting duties in her colonies"; the second, "in not relieving her vessels from the restriction of returning direct from the United States to the colonies, after permission had been given by Great Britain to our vessels to clear out from the colonies to any other than a British port"; and the third, "in omitting to accept the terms offered by the act of Parliament of July, 1825." McLane was authorized to say that the United States would open its ports to British vessels coming from the British colonies laden with such colonial products as might be imported in American vessels, on condition that Great Britain would extend to American vessels the privileges offered by that act.
In these instructions Van Buren only reechoed the views which Gallatin had strongly expressed to the Department of State in his despatches in 1826. But Van Buren did not stop here. He directed McLane not to "harass" the British cabinet by the repetition of prior discussions, but, if the course of the late administration should be brought up, to say that its views had been submitted to the people of the United States, that the counsels by which his own conduct was directed represented the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts, and that to set up those acts as the cause of withholding from the people of the United States privileges which would otherwise be extended to them, would be unjust in itself and could not fail to excite their deepest sensibility. McLane duly communicated to the British government the entire purport of his instructions. His negotiations were altogether successful. By a proclamation issued by President Jackson on October 5, 1830, under the authority of an act of Congress of the 29th of the preceding May, the ports of the United States were declared to be open to British vessels and their cargoes coming from the colonies, on payment of the same charges as American vessels coming from the same quarter. An order in council issued November 5, 1830, extended to American vessels reciprocal privileges. The last remnants of the vicious system that was thus broken down were removed in 1849.
In 1831 McLane resigned his post in London, and Van Buren was appointed by the President to fill the vacancy. He arrived in England in September, and entered upon the discharge of the duties of his office. On January 25, 1832, the Senate, of which he had so recently been a member, refused to confirm him. In the memorable debate that preceded his rejection, his pointed and censorious disavowal, in the instructions to McLane, of responsibility for the acts of the preceding administration, formed a principal ground of objection. It was eloquently declared by his Whig opponents that party differences should not be injected into international discussions. The criticism was essentially sound; but, in the popular estimation, the punishment was altogether disproportionate to the offence. A widespread impression that its infliction was inspired by resentment, occasioned by party defeat, greatly enhanced Van Buren's political strength.
While the contest with colonial restrictions was going on, steady progress was made towards the accomplishment of the design, propounded by the Continental Congress in 1776, of placing the foreigner, in respect of commerce and navigation, on an equal footing with the native, and to this end of abolishing all discriminating charges whatsoever. "This principle," once declared John Quincy Adams, "is altogether congenial to our institutions, and the main obstacle to its adoption consists in this: that the fairness of its operation depends upon its being admitted universally." Before the formation of the Constitution, the several States were driven for purposes of retaliation to impose discriminating duties on foreign vessels and their cargoes. The system was continued by. the
