CHAPTER VI

THE FRIENDLY CONVENTIONS

With the Peace of Ghent at the end of the War of 1812-14, there was an end also of the period of bad feeling between the British and American Governments. From the signing of the Treaties of Independence in 1782-83 to the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there was mutual suspicion and irritation. But in the War of 1812-14 both Powers "found themselves "; they had each proved to be a good match for the other in the fight, and in the final settlement neither had to suffer the mortification of defeat. There were no rankling sores left. There were, indeed, plenty of boundary questions still unsettled; but population was sparse, land was not greatly prized, and controversies about quite large blocks of territory were looked upon merely as matters concerning "rectifications." It is true that one of the best European judges of public affairs said that Great Britain now saw, not without terror," serious dissensions and "perhaps an inevitable war " with the United States, 66 a formidable rival." 1 But statesmanship on both sides averted this calamity.

After 1814 the official relations of the Foreign Office and the State Department were usually smooth and reasonably friendly. The type of ministers sent from the Court of St. James to Washington improved before this time Liston was the only thoroughly qualified and first-rate diplomatist sent, although Erskine, who had little previous experience, proved himself to be perfectly capable for the post. After 1814 there was a succession of capable British Ministers at Washington: Charles Bagot, Stratford Canning, Charles Vaughan, Lord Lyons. From the American side there were John Quincy Adams, Richard Rush, James Buchanan, Charles Francis Adams.

At the Foreign Office, American affairs, for a time at any rate,

1 Dépêches inédites du Chevalier de Gentz aux Hospodars de Valachie, edited by Prokesch-Osten (1876), I, 364 (written in 1818).

bulked largely. The tone of Castlereagh's dispatches was always admirable, but that of Canning had, during his first period as Secretary of State (1807-1809), been somewhat acid, or sub-acid. In his second period, from 1822 to 1827, the tone of his dispatches was on the whole friendly. Thus the effect of the War of 1812 was to draw the Governments of Great Britain and of the United States closer, in the very period, curiously, when the literary relations of the two peoples were becoming worse. For this is the time when British travellers took to visiting America and writing about it; when Captain Basil Hall wrote Travels in North America, 1827-28, and Mrs. Frances Trollope wrote her Domestic Manners of the Americans. On their publication these works caused considerable mortification in America,1 although actually they displayed OldWorld prejudice rather than ill-nature. Mrs. Trollope's conclusions at least were, on the balance, rather favourable to the Americans. Yet readers of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883) will note how they still rankled in the last half of the nineteenth century. Even Captain Hall paid a tribute generous, if a little condescending, to the new nation when he wrote: "I must do the Americans the justice to say that they invariably took my remarks in good part." At any rate no exception could be taken to the tone of the Foreign Office, which from 1815 showed real sympathy and a good deal of discernment in its contacts with the United States.

An immediate result of the Treaty of Ghent was the negotiating of a commercial treaty between the two Governments. To obtain this result, John Quincy Adams, Gallatin and Clay crossed from Ghent to London, and met in conference two of their Ghent vis-à-vis, Mr. Goulburn and Dr. Adams, to whom was added Frederick John Robinson. This last was Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and was a capable economist, being known later, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, as "Prosperity Robinson," and later still as Lord Goderich, and finally Earl of Ripon. He was inclined to free-trade, and would have agreed to modify the Navigation Acts in favour of the Americans, but the opinion of the Cabinet and of Parliament was not ripe for such a change.

The Commercial Convention signed on July 3, 1815, gave liberty to each nation to enter any ports or rivers to which foreigners were

1 See, for example, A Review (of Captain Basil Hall's Travels in North America, by an American (London, 1830).

permitted to come (article 1). It also enacted (article 2) that:

No higher or other duties shall be imposed on the importation into the United States of any articles the growth, produce or manufacture of his Britannic Majesty's territories in Europe, and no higher or other duties shall be imposed on the importation into the territories of his Britannic Majesty in Europe of any articles the growth, produce or manufacture of the United States, than are or shall be payable on the like articles... of any foreign country.

Thus neither Great Britain nor the United States was to discriminate between their treatment of each other and their treatment of other countries. But the Treaty went further: it also enacted that:

No higher or other duties or charges shall be imposed in any of the ports of the United States on British vessels than those payable in the same ports by vessels of the United States; nor in the ports of any of his Britannic Majesty's territories in Europe on the vessels of the United States than shall be payable in the same ports on British vessels.

So there was to be no advantage given to British shipping over American in British ports, nor to American over British shipping in American ports. This equal treatment went on until 1920, when it was put an end to by the American Merchant Shipping Act.

The rule of equal treatment for American and British ships in British ports applied only to European waters. In Great Britain's colonial possessions the Navigation Acts continued in force until 1849, although after 1830 a modus vivendi or informal agreement gave American ships certain concessions: American ships were permitted to trade directly with the ports of the United States and Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Prince of Wales Island. In American waters British ships enjoyed equal treatment with Americans under the 1815 Convention, but this did not apply to coastal shipping, which has always been a legal monopoly of the local marine.1

It is clear from the Convention of July 3, 1815, that the United States and Great Britain were both friendly and liberal in their commercial outlook. As the century went on, the commercial policy of Great Britain became more and more liberal, while that of the United States, from the year 1816, grew, although not by regular stages, ever more restrictive. But in 1815 the Government

1 By the Embargo Act of 1808 and the Navigation Act of 1817; see The Old Merchant Marine, by Ralph D. Paine (1920), p. 190.

of the United States had not adopted protection as the guiding principle of its economic policy. Among the commissioners at London, only Henry Clay advocated the necessity of building up home industries under a system of protection. Gallatin was a freetrader, of the school of Adam Smith. The outlook of John Quincy Adams was almost wholly political. He welcomed the Convention of 1815 as another course of bricks in the structure of AngloAmerican good relations. On taking leave, Mr. Goulburn said, "Well, this is the second good job we have done together." "Yes," replied Adams," and I only hope we may do a third, going on from better to better." 1

Mr. Adams was the regular Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James, after the War of 1812-14. He had come over from Paris in May, 1815, and had already found the negotiation for the commercial Convention going on in the hands of Clay and Gallatin. The residence of Adams during his London mission was No. 67 Harley Street. Messrs. Baring, the banking firm of Bishopsgatewithin, were the business agents through whom the American Government transmitted its dispatches. The American Minister was received hospitably into the social life of London. He notes in his Diary that seven o'clock was the usual hour of dinner "at this end of the town," but apparently it was the custom of people (sometimes even the host and hostess) to arrive very unpunctually, so that dinner was really at a later hour. After dinner perhaps two hundred or three hundred more people might arrive. There would be neither dancing nor card-playing, but the whole company, packed into two rooms, would pass a couple of hours "in looking at one another and occasional conversation among their respective acquaintances." 2

The British Minister to Washington was Charles Bagot, who took up his appointment after Adams came to London. It so happened that both ministers kissed the hands of the Prince Regent at the same levee, Adams on presenting his credentials, and Bagot on receiving his appointment. "The Prince," writes Adams, “in speaking to him [Bagot], remarked that it was on the same day that I had presented my credentials. By which he intended me to understand that the friendly advances of the United States had been met with the utmost promptitude." Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, were

1 J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, III, 248.

Ibid., 207.

very polite and frank with Adams.1 Besides private dinners and official dinners from the Cabinet Ministers, the banquets of the Lord Mayor and of the City Livery Companies were already an established part of diplomatic life. Adams, like his successors at London, had to answer many toasts and to make many after-dinner speeches. In 1817 Adams was called back to America to be Secretary of State to President Monroe. He left Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, with his family, in the ship Washington, on Sunday, June 15.

Before he left Mr. Adams already had put in train a negotiation at London, which was successfully carried to completion in Washington. The affair had begun with a proposal forwarded by James Monroe, when Secretary of State, to Adams, to the effect "that some understanding should be had, or agreement entered into, between the two countries, in regard to their naval armaments upon the Lakes." Mr. Adams, having brought the matter to Lord Castlereagh's notice, received the reply that, "His Royal Highness the Prince Regent will cheerfully adopt any reasonable system which may contribute to the attainment of objects so desirable to both States." The proposal of Secretary Monroe, as transmitted through Mr. Adams, had not contained any precise scheme. Accordingly, it was referred for practical working out of the details of an agreement to Charles Bagot, His Majesty's Minister at Washington.

2

...

Charles Bagot was one of Canning's circle of friends. His portrait ! shows him as a tall, dignified, handsome man, with a noble head, and an aristocratic presence. He was born in 1781, the second son of Lord Bagot, of Bagots Bromley, and was educated at Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford. Like the well-connected young men of the Tory governing class, he entered the House of Commons early as member for a "pocket borough," in this case Castle Rising, Norfolk, and almost at once was made Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Canning, who then became his close friend, was Foreign Secretary. After one session of Parliament he took up the career of diplomacy. It was on July 31, 1815, that he was appointed Minister to the United States, after having been Minister to France in 1814.

Bagot was a very charming, hospitable and cultivated man. In

1 Memoirs, III, 219-21, 259.

* See Bagot to Monroe, July 26, 1816, in American State Papers, Foreign Relations, IV, 203.