The British still believed in their colonial system and applied its principles without regard to the interests of the United States.

Such American products as they wanted they allowed to be carried to British markets, but in British vessels.
Certain commodities, the production of which they wished to encourage within their own dominions, they added to the prohibited list.

Americans cried out indignantly that this was an attempt on the part of the British to punish their former colonies for their temerity in revolting.
The British Government may well have derived some satisfaction from the fact that certain restrictions bore heavily upon New England, as John Adams complained; but it would seem to be much nearer the truth to say that in a truly characteristic way the British were phlegmatically attending to their own interests and calmly ignoring the United States, and that there was little malice in their policy.
European nations had regarded American trade as a profitable field of enterprise and as probably responsible for much of Great Britain's prosperity.

It was therefore a relatively easy matter for the United States to enter into commercial treaties with foreign countries.

These treaties, however, were not fruitful of any great result; for, "with unimportant exceptions, they left still in force the high import duties and prohibitions that marked the European tariffs of the time, as well as many features of the old colonial system.