Washington" (Vol. V., p. 75), thus confirms the statements made by Carey and others:

Into

On opening their ports an immense quantity of foreign merchandise was introduced into the country, and they were tempted by the sudden cheapness of imported goods, and by their own wants, to purchase beyond their capacities for payment. this indiscretion they were in some measure beguiled by their own sanguine calculations on the value which a free trade would bestow on the produce of their soil, and by a reliance on those evidences of the public debt which were in the hands of most of them. So extravagantly, too, did many estimate the temptation which equal liberty and vacant lands would hold out to emigrants from the Old World, as to entertain the opinion that Europe was about to empty itself into America, and that the United States would derive from that source such an increase of population as would enhance their lands to a price heretofore not even conjectured.

Daniel Webster, whose speeches and addresses show that he had made a very thorough study of our early history, found the same state of facts as that described by the earlier witnesses. In his address delivered to the citizens of Pittsburgh, July 8, 1833, he said:

From the close of the war of the Revolution, there came on a period of depression and distress, on the Atlantic coast, such as the people had hardly felt during the sharpest crisis of the war itself. Ship-owners, shipbuilders, mechanics, artisans, all were destitute of employment, and some of them destitute of bread. British ships came freely, and British ships came plentifully; while to American ships and American products there was neither protection on the one side, nor the equivalent of reciprocal free trade on the other. The cheaper labor of England supplied the inhabitants of the Atlantic shores with everything. Ready-made clothes, among the rest, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, were for sale in every city. All these things came free from any general system of imposts.

Some of the States

attempted to establish their own partial systems, but they failed. Voluntary association was resorted to, but that failed also.

In some of the States the whole merchant class was engulfed, no less than the manufacturers and their workmen, by the augmenting flood of inpouring foreign goods, which seemed about to overwhelm every material interest of the country. Proof of this is presented by Bancroft, in the appendix to his "History of the Formation of the Constitution" (Vol. I., p. 432), where he cites the following extract from an official dispatch of Van Berckel, American minister of the United Netherlands, to his government, under date of April 27, 1785:

The latest news from Boston which have arrived here announce that the merchants at that place are extremely dissatisfied; that a number of English factors and agents settling there have made a sort of monopoly of all the goods imported from England, whereby the trade of that town must fall entirely into English hands. The merchants have resolved to petition Congress to adopt such measures regarding the trade of the United States as shall be advantageous; that, until the necessary resolutions shall be taken by Congress, the merchants resolve solemnly to have no direct or indirect commercial relations with these factors or agents, and, for this object, neither to sell nor to rent houses or warehouses to them; further, they have resolved to address the supreme executive of each State to adopt the necessary measures to prevent the unloading of all goods on English account consigned to such factors or agents. It is certain that the English have the trade of these States almost wholly in their hands, whereby their influence must increase; and a constantly increasing scarcity of money begins to be felt, since no ship sails hence to England without large sums of money on board, especially the English packetboats, which monthly take with them between forty and fifty thousand pounds sterling.

On page 439, in the appendix, Bancroft cites the

following intelligence from New York, under date of June 4, 1785:

There is no trade with any but the British, who alone give the credit they want, and draw off all the bullion they can collect. They see no prospect of clothing themselves, unless they had the circuitous commerce they formerly enjoyed with Great Britain, which many think a vain expectation, now they are no part of the empire. The scarcity of money makes the produce of the country cheap, to the disappointment of the farmers and the discouragement of husbandry. Thus the two classes of merchants and farmers, that divide nearly all America, are discontented and distressed. Some great change is approaching.

Less than three years of practical free trade with foreign nations had sufficed to bring about this revulsion, and to fill the land with ruin and suffering, so that the melancholy spectacle was presented of a people, who rose in war, sinking in peace. Those days of severe trial and bitter experience teach precious lessons, worthy the attention of such of our statesmen as are disposed to trace national calamities to their proper causes, in order to guard against their return at a future period.

In the events under the Confederation which remain to be narrated we shall see the gloom thickening, the depression more widely diffused, the embarrassments more afflictive, the difficulties of the situation more complex and dangerous.

CHAPTER III.

UNDER THE CONFEDERATION-CONTINUED.

The six years after the peace of 1783 cover the only period in which the experiment of virtual free trade with other countries has been tried by the United States. It is Great Britain's boast-a false boast-that she has banished the protective principle from her tariff, and that she levies duties on imports with the sole object of procuring revenue; but her present custom-house system embodies the very soul of restriction when compared with the low, scant, feeble barriers to the entrance of foreign merchandise that were set up separately by the various American States which composed the Confederation. For the first and only time in the history of this country, a full and fair trial was given to the policy of practically unrestrained importations. So disastrous was the outcome-so overwhelming are the proofs of the failure in practice of the doctrines of the free traders-that the frightful demoralization which took place, involving all classes of the people, and even threatening the safety of political liberty, should be made conspicuous in these annals, as a solemn warning to the present and the future.

Before the close of 1786 bankruptcy, distress, and apprehension had spread throughout the various States, with domestic violence in several of them. Many pamphlets, designed to elucidate the situation and to point out the remedy, began to be published. These were mainly of two distinct sorts, those which discussed the proposed emission of paper money under State

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authority, as the true plan of ameliorating the public troubles, and those which advocated the regulation of foreign trade for the development of home manufactures, as the only method which could eradicate the existing evils. One of the latter The Commercial Conduct of the United States of America Considered, and the True Interests thereof, attempted to be shown by a Citizen of New York" (1786), for gratuitous circulation-may be taken as a sample of its class. In his preface the author says:

The profession of a merchant is trade, they consult their own interest; but it is the Legislature only which can check and prohibit an intemperate, impolitic, and luxurious commerce, and therefore, for the exertion of such power and authority, the following sheets are inscribed to the Legislatures of the respective States.

He begins by pointing out how the prisons are crowded with debtors; how the estates of many are sold by execution from under their feet, to satisfy very trifling debts; how the cries of all ranks of the people are for money; and how the result is a complication of misfortune and misery. Then he proceeds to designate the parent cause and the needed remedy, as follows:

I would observe that it is generally laid down as a self-evident proposition that trade is the road to and fountain of riches. Of this very few among us ever so much as doubted, and therefore every man that has it in his power turns merchant; but whether in such their commercial pursuits they serve themselves or their country, or whether it has not a direct contrary effect, is what I also mean to consider in the following pages.

We have many merchants whose trade is altogether to Europe, from whence they import every kind of its manufactures, of which I have often known above fifty thousand pounds sterling arrive in a single ship, the greatest part of which are foreign