She still insisted upon regulating the trade of her West Indies and Canada.

American East Indiamen were to be limited to direct voyages and could not bring cargoes to Europe.

Though this discrimination angered Congress, to which it appeared as lopsided reciprocity, the old duties were nevertheless repealed; and then, presto! the British colonial policy of exclusion was enforced and eighty thousand tons of American shipping became idle because the West India market was closed.
There followed several years of unhappy wrangling, a revival of the old smuggling spirit, the risk of seizure and confiscations, and shipping merchants with long faces talking ruin.

The theory of free trade versus protection was as debatable and opinions were as conflicting then as now.

Some were for retaliation, others for conciliation; and meanwhile American shipmasters went about their business, with no room for theories in their honest heads, and secured more and more of the world's trade.