[934] Jay to Reed, Dec. 12, 1786; _ib._, 222.
[935] Jay to Price, Sept. 27, 1786; _ib._, 168.
[936] Madison to Randolph, Jan. 10, 1788; _Writings_: Hunt, v, 81.
[937] Washington to Lee, Oct. 31, 1786; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 76-77.
[938] Washington to Madison, Nov. 5, 1786; _ib._, 81.
[939] Washington to Knox, Dec. 26, 1786; _ib._, 103-04. And Washington wrote to Lafayette that "There are seeds of discontent in every part of the Union." (_Writings_: Sparks, ix, 263.)
[940] Marshall to James Wilkinson, Jan. 5, 1787; _Amer. Hist. Rev._, xii, 347-48.
[941] Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787; _Works_: Ford, v, 265.
[942] Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787; _Works_: Ford, v, 263.
[943] Jefferson to Smith, Nov. 13, 1787; _ib._, 362.
[944] "The payments from the States under the calls of Congress have in no year borne any proportion to the public wants. During the last year ... the aggregate payments ... fell short of 400,000 doll^{rs}, a sum neither equal to the interest due on the foreign debts, nor even to the current expenses of the federal Government. The greatest part of this sum too went from Virg^a, which will not supply a single shilling the present year." (Madison to Jefferson, March 18, 1786; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 228.)
[945] Washington to Jay, Aug. 1, 1786; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 54-55.
[946] Jay (Secretary of State under the Confederation) to Jefferson, Dec. 14, 1786; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 223.
[947] "We are wasting our time & labour in vain efforts to do business"
(because of State delegates not attending), wrote Jefferson in 1784.
(Jefferson to Washington, March 15, 1784; _Works_: Ford, iv, 266.) And at the very climax of our difficulties "a sufficient number of States to do business have not been represented in Congress." (Jay to Wm.
Carmichael, Jan. 4, 1786; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 225.) During half of September and all of October, November, December, January, and February, nine States "have not been represented in congress"; and this even after the Const.i.tution had been adopted. (Jay to Jefferson, March 9, 1789; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 365.)
[948] Jay to Jefferson, Dec. 14, 1786; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 223-24. And Melancton Smith declared that "the farmer cultivates his land and reaps the fruit.... The merchant drives his commerce and none can deprive him of the gain he honestly acquires.... The mechanic is exercised in his art, and receives the reward of his labour." (1797-98; Ford: _P. on C._, 94.) Of the prosperity of Virginia, Grigsby says, "our agriculture was most prosperous, and our harbors and rivers were filled with ships. The shipping interest ... was really advancing most rapidly to a degree of success never known in the colony." (Grigsby, i, footnote to p. 82; and see his brilliant account of Virginia"s prosperity at this time; _ib._, 9-19.) "The spirit of industry throughout the country was never greater.
The productions of the earth abound," wrote Jay to B. Vaughan, Sept. 2, 1784. (_Jay_: Johnston, iii, 132.)
[949] Jay to John Adams, Feb. 21, 1787; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 235. Jay thought that the bottom of the trouble was that "relaxation in government and extravagance in individuals create much public and private distress, and much public and private want of good faith."
(_Ib._, 224.)
[950] Madison to Jefferson, Dec. 4, 1786; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 293.
"This indulgence to the people as it is called & considered was so warmly wished for out of doors, and so strenuously pressed within that it could not be rejected without danger of exciting some worse project of a popular cast." (_Ib._)
[951] Madison to Washington, Dec. 24, 1786; _ib._, 301. "My acquiescence in the measure was against every general principle which I have embraced, and was extorted by a fear that some greater evil under the name of relief to the people would be subst.i.tuted." (_Ib._)
[952] Rutledge to Jay, May 2, 1789; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 368.
[953] Washington to Jay, May 18, 1786; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 31-32.
[954] Jay to Washington, June 27, 1786; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 204.
[955] _Ib._, 205.
[956] Washington to Harrison, Jan. 18, 1784; _Writings_: Ford, x, 345.
[957] _Ib._
[958] See Madison"s masterful summary of the wickedness, weakness, and folly of the State Governments in _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 361-69.
[959] Washington to Jay, March 10, 1787; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 125.
[960] See _supra_, chap. VI.
[961] Madison to Jefferson, March 18, 1786; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 228.
"Another unhappy effect of a continuance of the present anarchy of our commerces will be a continuance of the unfavorable balance on it, which by draining us of our metals, furnishes pretexts for the pernicious subst.i.tution of paper money, for indulgencies to debtors, for postponements of taxes." (_Ib._)
[962] Virginia carefully defined her revenue boundaries as against Pennsylvania and Maryland; and provided that any vessel failing to enter and pay duties as provided by the Virginia tariff laws might be seized by any person and prosecuted "one half to the use of the informer, and the other half to the use of the commonwealth." (Va. Statutes at Large (1785), chap. 14, 46.)
Virginia strengthened her tariff laws against importations by land. "If any such importer or owner shall unload any such wagon or other carriage containing any of the above goods, wares, or merchandise brought into this state by land without first having entered the same as directed above, every such wagon or other carriage, together with the horses thereto belonging and all such goods wares and merchandise as shall be brought therein, shall be forfeited and recovered by information in the court of the county; two-thirds to the informer and one-third toward lessening the levy of the county where such conviction shall be made."
(_Ib._)
Even Pennsylvania, already the princ.i.p.al workshop of the country, while enacting an avowedly protective tariff on "Manufactures of Europe and Other foreign parts," included "cider, malted barley or grain, fish, salted or dried, cheese, b.u.t.ter, beef, pork, barley, peas, mustard, manufactured tobacco" which came, mostly, from sister States. The preamble declares that the duties are imposed to protect "the artisans and mechanics of this state" without whose products "the war could not have been carried on."
In addition to agricultural articles named above, the law includes "playing cards, hair powder, wrought gold or silver utensils, polished or cut stones, musical instruments, walking canes, testaments, psalters, spelling books or primers, romances, novels and plays, and horn or tortoise sh.e.l.l combs," none of which could be called absolutely indispensable to the conduct of the war. The preamble gives the usual arguments for protective tariffs. It is the first protective tariff law, in the present-day sense, ever pa.s.sed. (Pa. Statutes at Large (1785), 99.)
[963] Even at the present time the various States have not recovered from this anti-National and uneconomic practice, as witness the tax laws and other statutes in almost every State designed to prevent investments by the citizens of that State in industries located in other States.
Worse, still, are the mult.i.tude of State laws providing variable control over railways that are essentially National.
[964] _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 395.
[965] Marshall (1st ed.), v, 76-79.
[966] Madison to Washington, April 16, 1787; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 345-46. This ultra-Nationalist opinion is an interesting contrast to Madison"s States" Rights views a few years later. (See _infra_, vol. II, chaps. II, III, and IV.)
[967] Minton Collins at Richmond to Stephen Collins at Philadelphia, May 8, 1788; MS., Lib. Cong.
[968] Sam Smith in London to Stephen Collins in Philadelphia, July 21, 1788; _ib._
[969] Minton Collins to Stephen Collins, Aug. 9, 1788; _ib._
[970] "Vergennes complained, and with a good deal of stress, that they did not find a sufficient dependence on arrangements taken with us. This was the third time, too, he had done it.... He observed too, that the administration of justice with us was tardy, insomuch that their merchants, when they had money due to them within our States, considered it as desperate; and that our commercial regulations, in general, were disgusting to them." (Jefferson"s Report; _Works_: Ford, iv, 487.)
[971] Jefferson to Stuart, Jan. 25, 1786; _ib._, v, 74.
[972] Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 16, 1786; _ib._, v, 230.
[973] Jefferson to Carrington, Paris, Aug. 4, 1787; _ib._, 318; also 332; and Jefferson to Wythe, Sept. 16, 1787; _ib._, 340.
[974] Jefferson to Carrington, Paris, Aug. 4, 1787; _ib._, 318.
[975] Jefferson to Meusnier, Jan. 24, 1786; _ib._, 8.