was said to affect the livelihood of ten thousand persons in England, and which was dependent upon a steady and permanent supply of the raw material.

References:

For a history of the North Atlantic Fisheries, see Moore's Digest of International Law, I, 767 et seq.; Moore's History and Digest of International Arbitrations, I, chap. 16 (The Halifax Commission); chap. 13 (Reserved Fisheries); Rush's Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London; Gallatin's Writings.

For the Award of The Hague Court (in 1910), see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1910, p. 544 et seq.

For a history of the Bering Sea Dispute, see Moore's History and Digest of International Arbitrations, I, chap. 17 (Fur Seal Arbitration).

V

THE CONTEST WITH COMMERCIAL RESTRICTIONS

WHEN viewed in their wider relations, the early efforts of the United States to establish the rights of neutrals and the freedom of the seas are seen to form a part of the great struggle for the liberation of commerce from the restrictions with which the spirit of national monopoly had fettered and confined it. When the United States declared their independence, exclusive restrictions, both in the exchange of commodities and in their transportation, existed on every side. The system of colonial monopoly was but the emanation of the general principle, on which nations then consistently acted, of regarding everything "bestowed on others as so much withholden from themselves." Prohibitions and discriminations were universal.

Such was the prospect on which the United States looked when they achieved their independence. With exceptions comparatively unimportant, there was not a single port in the Western Hemisphere with which an American vessel could lawfully trade, outside of its own country. But the exclusion

most seriously felt was that from the British West Indies. Prior to the Revolution the burdens of the restrictive system were essentially mitigated by the intercolonial trade, the British colonists on the continent finding their best markets in the British islands; but when the United States, by establishing their independence, became to Great Britain a foreign nation, they at once collided with her colonial system. American statesmen foresaw these things and endeavored to guard against them, but in vain. When the provisional articles of peace with Great Britain were later converted into a definitive treaty, without the addition of any commercial clauses, the hope of establishing the relations between the two countries at the outset on the broad basis of mutual freedom of intercourse disappeared.

In the contest with commercial restrictions, the government of the United States adopted as the basis of its policy the principle of reciprocity. In its later diplomacy the term "reciprocity" is much used to denote agreements designed to increase the interchange of commodities by mutual or equivalent reductions of duty. Tested by recent experience, the later "reciprocity" might not inaptly be described as a policy recommended by free-traders as an escape from protection, and by protectionists as an escape from free trade, but distrusted by both and supported by neither. It is, however, impossible to doubt that, in the efforts of the United States

to bring about the abolition of the cumbersome and obstructive contrivances of the old navigation laws, the policy of reciprocity proved to be an efficient instrument in furthering the tendency towards greater commercial freedom. It was announced by the government at the very threshold of its existence. In the preamble to the treaty of commerce with France of 1778, it was declared that the contracting parties, wishing to "fix in an equitable and permanent manner" the rules that should govern their commerce, had judged that this end "could not be better obtained than by taking for the basis of their agreement the most perfect equality and reciprocity, and by carefully avoiding all those burthensome preferences which are usually sources of debate, embarrassment, and discontent; by leaving, also, each party at liberty to make, respecting commerce and navigation, those interior regulations which it shall find most convenient to itself; and by founding the advantage of commerce solely upon reciprocal utility and the just rules of free intercourse; reserving withal to each party the liberty of admitting at its pleasure other nations to a participation of the same advantages." John Quincy Adams, in 1823, while avowing the belief that this preamble was "the first instance on the diplomatic record of nations, upon which the true principles of all fair commercial negotiation between independent states were laid down and proclaimed to the

II

world," at the same time declared that it "was, to the foundation of our commercial intercourse with the rest of mankind, what the Declaration of Independence was to that of our internal government. The two instruments," he added, "were parts of one and the same system matured by long and anxious deliberation of the founders of this Union in the ever memorable Congress of 1776; and as the Declaration of Independence was the foundation of all our municipal institutions, the preamble to the treaty with France laid the corner-stone for all our subsequent transactions of intercourse with foreign nations."

The progress of the United States, in the contest thus early begun with commercial restrictions, was painful and slow. Soon after the establishment of independence, Congress took into consideration the entire subject of commercial relations, and on May 7, 1784, adopted a series of resolutions in which the principles by which American negotiators should be guided were set forth. By the first of these resolutions it was declared that, in any arrangements that might be effected, each party should have the right to carry its own produce, manufactures, and merchandise in its own vessels to the ports of the other, and to bring thence the produce and merchandise of the other, paying in each case only such duties as were paid by the most-favored nation. The second resolution, which related to colonial