53. GREAT BRITAIN, Diplomatic Re lations of the United States with. The relations of the United States with Great Britain, both by origin and inheritance of the republic and by commercial and neighboring interests, have always been more important than relations with any other power. In them may be traced the chief threads of permanent for eign interests of the United States — the fur therance of tradt and neutrality, territorial adjustment and expansion, exclusion of Euro pean interference in the American continent, the use and care of fisheries—and various con ditions and incidents affecting these main interests.
The American Revolution was a protest against arbitrary colonial rule. It was fought chiefly for the rights of Englishmen against the tyranny of a line of German kings who had not yet learned the basis and spirit of Eng lish institutions. Although by its years of strug gle it engendered much bitterness on both sides, it taught valuable lessons, both to the Ameri cans and to the mother country, influencing the development of democracy and the establish ment of better conditions in colonial government.
In negotiations determining the conditions of its independence, the new republic was re markably successful, even against the secret in fluences of France and of Spain. It resisted the claim of England for land east of the Penobscot with which to compensate Loyalists; and, through the good will of the British gov ernment, obtained the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, from which Spain desired to exclude the United States. It also obtained a generous share in the North eastern fisheries. At the same time it agreed under conditions to recommend to the States restitution of property taken from Loyalists, to forbid further confiscations and to facilitate the recovery of debts due British citizens from American citizens.
One of the earliest lessons which the young republic learned was that it could no longer obtain the trade and the protection of British fleets enjoyed by Americans as colonists of England. By the Revolution, fought in part
to secure freedom of access to the VVest Indies, is really lost former privileges in the British islands.
Recently torn by civil strife and not yet recovered from the misfortunes which it had suffered, the United States, with independency achieved, still found its interests in collision with the British colonial system, and especially with the irritating early British trade policy based upon the idea of establishing a mutual dependence between Canada and the British West Indies by stimulating Canada to furnish the latter with American products.
New sources of irritation arose. Ten years after the treaty of 1783, Great Britain, influ enced by Canadian traders with interests in the fur trade of the American Northwest, still held within the boundaries of the United States a half dozen or more fortifications and military posts which by the treaty she had agreed to abandon, still refused to pay the damages for slaves carried from America at the close of the Revolution and still delayed to send a min ister to the United States. At the same time, the United States, by neglecting to restore the confiscated estates of the Loyalists of the Revo lution, and unable to assist the collection of the debts of American citizens contracted in England before the war furnished an excuse or pretext for the British delay. For three years efforts for adjustment of difficulties were made at London by John Adams, succeeded in 1788 by Gouverneur Morris, who in 1791 was replaced by Pinckney.
The French treaties of 1778 and 1788 proved a source of embarrassment and trouble. In Con gress, the followers of Jefferson, whose sympa thy with France was unconcealed, proposed to close the ports of the United States to British commerce and pushed through the House a bill which was defeated in the Senate only by the vote of the Vice-President, and which, if it had been enacted, probably would have precipitated war.