demonstrated her gratitude, by presenting him with a silver tea-caddy
ladle, which could hardly be worth more than five shillings!
The service, on this station, was attended with difficulties which had,
perhaps, been but little expected, either by the officers of the British
navy, or those who sent them; and it was far more fortunate for
government, than it was for Captain Nelson, that he had been employed on
the occasion.
The Americans, while colonists of Great Britain, had enjoyed, as
subjects, almost the entire trade between their country and our West
India Islands. Having erected themselves into independent states, they
had hoped that, on the return of peace, we should have permitted them
again to enjoy the privileges of fellow-subjects, which they had, by
withdrawing their allegiance, undoubtedly forfeited. This hope had not
been indulged, by the Americans, through any want of political
discernment on their part; they well knew themselves now to be, what on
other occasions they loudly enough boasted, foreigners in every sense of
the word. They were satisfied, however, at the same time, that the
mother-country had not always been renowned for the highest degree of
national sagacity; they felt, that they had themselves acquired, by
force, the independence which they enjoyed; and they trusted that the
British administration, through apprehensions of renewing an unpopular
and disastrous war, would be induced to connive at, if not confirm, the
privilege the Americans affected to claim under the very Navigation Act
of Great Britain, the most beneficial effect of which they were thus
artfully contriving to destroy.
The West Indians, themselves, who were prevented, by an immediate
prospect of the return of their own interest, from contemplating it in a
remote view, they well knew, would oppose no obstacle: these, in fact,
readily fell into the snare, and were clamorous for their old customers.
Those persons, too, who held official situations, generally more
considerate of their ease and their emoluments, than of the duties
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