UNDER THE CONFEDERATION. UNT CA carried on generally in small establishments. Extensive factories, rolling mills, and workshops, such as are plentiful to-day, then had no existence in America. The peace of 1783 swept away the stimulating influences exerted by the war, and precipitated on the then independent States the multiform evils of unrestrained foreign competition. By the fourth article of the Articles of Confederation, ratified in Philadelphia by delegates of the thirteen colonies, July 9, 1778, it was stipulated as follows: The people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from every other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant. As Congress had no authority to enact a general tariff on imports without the consent of every one of the States, and as this authority was steadily refused, the result of the above provisions was that virtual free trade prevailed with foreign countries, from the peace of Paris until August 1, 1789, when the first tariff act under "the more perfect Union" went into effect. Each State thought itself competent to regulate its own commerce, external and internal; sought by its own separate import laws and navigation acts to serve its own particular interests, without at all considering the interests of the other States; and they in this way impeded or defeated one another's measures. Matthew Carey, in "The New Olive Branch" (page 32), says: At the close of the Revolutionary war the trade of America was free and unrestrained in the fullest sense of the word, accord ing to the theory of Adam Smith, Say, Ricardo, the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the authors of the Encyclopædia. Her ports were open, with scarcely any duties, to the vessels and merchandise of all other nations. The rate of duties in Pennsylvania was only two and a half per cent. Even these were nugatory, because there was a free port established at Burlington by the State of New Jersey, where goods intended for Philadelphia were entered and conveyed over to this city clandestinely. The same fraudulent scenes were enacted in other States, and thus trade was, as I have stated, wholly free. Bancroft, in his "History of the Formation of the Constitution" (Vol. I., p. 175), says: The harbor at the mouth of the Hudson was at that time [1784] the most convenient port of entry for New Jersey and Connecticut, and the State of New York, through its custom house, levied on their inhabitants as well as on its own an ever increasing revenue by imports. The collector was a stubborn partisan. The irritating persistency in seeking local advantage, and this spirit of retaliation, increased with the lapse of time. Otto, the French minister at New York, wrote home to his government, under date of March 17, 1786, what follows: While the different States are active in granting the requisition of last September, and also a duty of five per cent upon all importations, Congress has been informed that New Jersey had suddenly recalled the powers which it had already given, and that it had refused to levy its contingent for the expenses of the Confederation. The motive for this revolting conduct was jealousy, on the part of New Jersey, of New York, which by its position enjoys an advantage on a great part of its commerce, and which, by means of its customs duties, levies a sort of impost upon New Jersey and Connecticut. New York, not having acceded to the resolutions of Congress, derives a great advantage from its customs, and obliges its neighbors, which have no large commercial towns, to pay a part of the expenses of its government. The * * * Assembly of New Jersey has just repealed its resolutions; and, to force New York to submit to the wish of Congress, it establishes a free port at Paulus Hook, lying to the west of the mouth of the North river, opposite New York. This port can do great damage to the commerce of that State, and it is hoped that a measure so decisive, the appeals of the members of the Union, and the activity of Congress, seated in that city, will finally prevail in changing its system. On the same subject and the evil results Young says, in his "National Economy" (p. 15): Although the States were politically independent, it was impossible to countervail the policy of other nations. Each State having, under the Confederation, the right to regulate its own trade, it imposed upon foreign productions, as well as those of its sister States, such duties as its own interests seemed to dictate. The States attempted, by their separate navigation laws, to secure their trade to their own vessels; and the selfish policy of some States counteracted the efforts of others. As the Congress had no power to lay duties or regulate trade, and as the States could not agree upon a uniform rate of duties, foreign nations passed such laws as they judged most likely to destroy our commerce and extend their own. Especially was this the policy of Great Britain. Our trade with her West India colonies was prohibited; and, by the enforcement of her navigation acts, our navigation was nearly destroyed. Foreign vessels and goods being freely admitted into the States, while ours were burdened with heavy duties in foreign ports, both the prices of goods imported and the prices of our exports were subject to the will of foreigners; and the money of our citizens was rapidly passing into the pockets of British manufacturers and merchants. In describing the state of the country at that time, a distinguished American statesman thus remarks : "In the comparative condition of the United States and Great Britain, not a hatter, a boot or shoemaker, a saddler, or a brass founder could carry on his business, except in the coarsest and most ordinary productions of their various trades, under the pressure of this foreign competition. Thus was presented the extraordinary and calamitous spectacle of a successful revolution wholly failing of its ultimate object. The people of America had gone to war, not for names, but for things. It was not merely to change a government administered by kings, princes, and ministers for a government administered by presidents, and secretaries, and members of Congress. It was to redress their own grievances, to improve their own condition, to throw off the burden which the colonial system laid on their industry. To attain these objects, they endured incredible hardships, and bore and suffered almost beyond the measure of humanity. And when their independence was attained, they found it was a piece of parchment. The arm which had struck for it in the field was palsied in the workshop; the industry which had been burdened in the colonies was crushed in the free States; and, at the close of the Revolution, the mechanics and manufacturers of the country found themselves, in the bitterness of their hearts, independent — and ruined.” The inundation of foreign goods which took place under these circumstances, and the deplorable consequences which followed, are thus described by Matthew Carey, in the "New Olive Branch" (p. 34): From almost every nation in Europe large shipments were made to this country-many of them of the most ludicrous kind, which implied an utter ignorance of the wants, the situation, and the resources of the United States. Among the rest the recesses of Monmouth street, in London, and Plunket street, in Dublin, the receptacles of the cast-off clothes of the two metropolises, were emptied of a portion of their contents; for it was supposed that the war had rendered the nation destitute of everything, even of covering. Happy was the man who could send "a venture," as it was called, to this country, which the misguided Europeans supposed an El Dorado, where everything was to be converted into gold with a cent per cent profit at least. Goods often lay on the wharves for many days for want of store-room. House rent rose to double and treble the former rates. The importers and consignees at first sold at great advances, and believed they were rapidly indemnifying themselves for the deprivations and sufferings. of the war. But these glorious times soon came to a close, like those of 1815. From "day-dreams" and delusive scenes of boundless wealth, the citizens awoke to pinching misery and distress. The nation had no mines to pay her debts. And industry, the only legitimate and permanent source of individual happiness, and national wealth, power, and resources, was destroyed, as it has recently been by the influx, and finally by the depreciation of the price, of the imported articles; for, the quantity on hand being equal to the consumption of two or three years, of course the great mass of goods fell below cost-often to half and one third. All our citizens were at once converted into disciples of Adam Smith. They purchased every species of goods "cheaper than they could be manufactured at home." Accordingly domestic manufactures were arrested in their career. The weaver, the shoemaker, the hatter, the saddler, the sugar-baker, the brewer, the ropemaker, etc., were reduced to bankruptcy. Their establishments were suspended. Their workmen were consigned to beggary. The payment for the foreign rubbish exhausted the country of nearly the whole of its specie, immense quantities of which had been introduced to pay the French armies, and likewise from the Spanish colonies. Two thirds, probably, of the specie then in the country were composed of French crowns. He further emphasizes his recital of the lamentable condition of affairs thus (p. 45): The ports of this country, I repeat, were open to the commerce of the whole world, with an impost so light as not even to meet the wants of the Treasury. The consequences followed which have never failed to follow such a state of things. Our markets were glutted. Prices fell. Competition on the part of our manufacturers was at an end. They were beggared and bankrupted. The merchants, whose importations had ruined them, were involved in the calamity. And the farmers, who had felicitated themselves on the grand advantage of “buying foreign merchandise cheap," sunk likewise into the vortex of general destruction. Chief Justice Marshall, in his well-known "Life of |