re-exported from the United States to the West Indies, provided it paid not less than one per cent ad valorem in duties to the American Treasury. This provision was only to be compared with Article XII. of Jay's treaty, in which Lord Grenville insisted and Jay agreed that the United States should export no cotton. Even Pitt had never proposed anything so offensive as the new restriction. He had indeed required that the American merchant whose ship arrived at Baltimore or Boston with a cargo of sugar or coffee from Cuba should unload her, carry the hogsheads and cases into a warehouse, and pass them through all the forms of the American custom-house; after which he must turn about and stow them again on shipboard,—an operation which was usually reckoned as equivalent, in breakage, pilfering, and wages, to a charge of about ten per cent on the value of the cargo; but he had not ventured to levy a duty upon them to be paid to the United States government. One step more, and—as a clever London pamphleteer suggested—the British government would require the American stevedores to wear the King's livery.[1] Had it been stipulated that the custom-house payments should be taken as full proof of neutrality and complete protection from seizure, the American merchant might have found a motive for submitting to the tax; but the treaty further insisted that both goods and vessel must be in good faith American property,—a condition which left the door open as widely as ever to the arbitrary seizures
- ↑ Oil without Vinegar, Medford, London, 1807.
