The disinclination which the cabinet of London had discovered to a commercial treaty with the United States was not attributed exclusively to the cause which had been assigned for it.

It was in part ascribed to that jealousy with which Britain was supposed to view the growing trade of America.
The general restrictions on commerce by which every maritime power sought to promote its own navigation, and that part of the European system in particular, by which each aimed at a monopoly of the trade of its colonies, were felt with peculiar keenness when enforced by England.

The people of America were perhaps the more sensible to the British resolutions on this subject, because, having composed a part of that empire, they had grown up in the habit of a free intercourse with all its ports; and, without accurately appreciating the cause to which a change of this usage was to be ascribed, they attributed it to a jealousy of their prosperity, and to an inclination to diminish the value of their independence.

In this suspicious temper, almost every unfavourable event which occurred was traced up to British hostility.
That an attempt to form a commercial treaty with Portugal had failed, was attributed to the influence of the cabinet of London; and to the machinations of the same power were also ascribed the danger from the corsairs of Barbary, and the bloody incursions of the Indians.

The resentment excited by these causes was felt by a large proportion of the American people; and the expression of it was common and public.
That correspondent dispositions existed in England is by no means improbable, and the necessary effect of this temper was to increase the difficulty of adjusting the differences between the two nations.
With France, the most perfect harmony subsisted.