Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

contracts with anything satisfactory to the creditor. Depreciation seized upon every species of property. Legal pressure to enforce the payment of debts caused alarming sacrifices of both personal and real estate; spread distress wide and far among the masses of the people; aroused in the hearts of the sufferers the bitterest feelings against lawyers, the courts, and the whole creditor class; led to a popular clamor for stay laws, installment plans, property-tender acts, and various other radical measures of supposed relief; and finally filled the whole land with excitement, apprehension, a sense of weakness, and a tendency to despair of the republic. Inability to pay even necessary taxes became general, and often these could be collected only by levy and sale of homesteads. All these evils came

in direct course from the excessive importations, which absorbed and carried out of the several States nearly all the coin, without which society seemed about to fall to pieces.

Let historical witnesses, most of them eye-witnesses, be called to substantiate these averments. The following extracts are taken from the third volume of Hildreth's "History of the United States":

One large portion of the wealthy men of colonial times had been expatriated, and another part had been impoverished by the Revolution. In their places a new moneyed class had sprung up, especially in the Eastern States, men who had grown rich in the course of the war as sutlers, by privateering, by speculations in the fluctuating paper money, and by other operations not always of the most honorable kind. Large claims against their less fortunate neighbors had accumulated in the hands of these men, many of whom were disposed to press their legal claims to the utmost. The sudden fortunes made by the war had introduced a spirit of luxury into the maritime towns, and even the taste and

manners of the rural inhabitants had been tainted by the effects of military service, in which so large a part of the male population had been more or less engaged. The fisheries, formerly a chief resource of New England, broken up by the war, had not yet been re-established. The farmers no longer found that market for their produce which the French, American, and British armies had furnished. The large importation of foreign goods, subject to little or no duty, and sold at peace prices, was proving ruinous to all those domestic manufactures and mechanical employments which the non-consumption agreements and the war had created and fostered. Immediately after the peace, the country had been flooded with imported goods, and debts had been unwarily contracted for which there was no means to pay. The imports from Great Britain in the years 1784 and 1785 had amounted in value to thirty millions of dollars, while the exports thither had not exceeded nine millions. The lawyers, whose fees were thought enormous, and who were fast growing rich, from the multiplicity of suits with which all the courts abounded, were regarded with no very favorable eyes by the mass of the citizens, impoverished by the same causes to which they owed their wealth. There was an abundance of discontented persons more or less connected with the late army, deprived by the peace of their accustomed means of support, and without opportunity to engage in productive industry. The community, from these various causes, was fast becoming divided into two embittered factions of creditors and debtors. The certificates of the public debt, parted with at a great discount by the officers and others to whom they had been given, were fast accumulating in the hands of a few speculators able to wait for better times. With the example of the old tenor paper before their eyes, an opinion gained ground among the people, oppressed by taxes to meet the interest on these debts, that the holders of certificates by purchase were only entitled to receive what they had paid-an opinion which tended to still further depreciation. Others of the debtor party had more extensive views. Stop and tender laws were called for, and in some States were passed. New issues of paper money were demanded, which, by their depreciation, might sweep off the whole mass of debt, public and private. Such issues were made in New York and Rhode Island, in which latter State John Collins had just been elected Governor. The Rhode Island paper

soon depreciated to eight for one. Laws were enacted to enforce its circulation; but, though similar to those formerly recommended by Congress to support the credit of the Continental money, they were now generally denounced as oppressive and unjust, and obtained for Rhode Island an unenviable notoriety.

Even those States which issued no paper money were far from enjoying a sound currency. The excessive importation of foreign goods had drained the country of specie. The circulating medium consisted principally of treasury orders on the State tax collectors, and depreciated certificates of State and federal debt. Even among those in favor of meeting the public liabilities by taxation, there was a lack of agreement as to the way in which taxes should be raised. The excessive importation of foreign goods, and the consequent pressure upon domestic manufactures, had diminished a good deal of the old prejudice against customs duties. A party had sprung up in favor of raising a large part of the public revenue in that way, thus reviving the old colonial schemes for the protection of domestic industry by duties upon foreign goods. This, however, was opposed by the merchants as injurious to their interests. They came forward as the champions of free trade, and insisted upon the old system of direct taxation. A large part of the people seemed quite disinclined to submit to either method.

The weakness, for some years so evident in Congress, had begun to extend to the States. Not only was the idea in circulation of separating into two or three confederacies, but some of the principal States seemed themselves in danger of splitting into fragments. pp. 465, 466, 467 and 468.

Discussing the insurrections in Massachusetts in 1786, the same author says:

The real difficulty was the poverty and exhaustion of the country consequent upon the war; the want of a certain and remunerative market for the produce of the farmer; and the depression of domestic manufactures by competition from abroad.—p. 472.

It is plain from these statements that the primary cause, back of all the troubles, was the free trade system

UNDER THE CONFEDERATION.

371

then in practice. There was a sufficient metallic currency in the country at the close of the war. Had Congress been empowered to lay duties on imports, and had a thoroughly protective tariff been enacted, no flood of foreign goods could have poured in to demand an exhaustive export of specie. Manufacturing industries would have sprung up; the farmer would have obtained a steady market at home for his surplus, then denied to him abroad; capital would have sought the profits of a stable business rather than the uncertainties of pure speculation; the national government would have derived an ample revenue for its current expenditures, and for the payment of interest on the public obligations, if not more than that; taxpayers would have experienced no distress in satisfying the demands. of the several States; production in its various branches would have expanded and flourished with the local increase of wealth, skill, and enterprise; and prosperity with contentment would have spread over the land, instead of the sufferings actually endured. Nothing is more remarkable than the rapidity with which a country usually recuperates after the close of a long war, and sometimes rises visibly above its condition previous to hostilities, if only the population is not greatly reduced in number and in effective producing power. This fact is elaborately pointed out by John Stuart Mill, in the fifth chapter of his work on "The Principles of Political Economy." What prevented the rapid recuperation of the United States, after the peace of 1783, was the system of free foreign trade, allowed to add its devastations upon industry to those of the Revolution.

Minot says, in his "History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts," beginning on page 11:

The usual consequences of war were conspicuous upon the habits of the people of Massachusetts. Those of the maritime towns relapsed into the voluptuousness which arises from the precarious wealth of naval adventurers. An emulation prevailed among men of fortune to exceed each other in the full display of their riches. This was imitated among the less opulent classes of citizens, and drew them off from those principles of diligence and economy which constitute the best support of all governments, and particularly of the republican. Besides which, what was most to be lamented, the discipline and manners of the army had vitiated the taste and relaxed the industry of the yeoman. In this disposition of the people to indulge the use of luxuries, the merchants saw a market for foreign manufactures. The political character of America, standing in a respectable view abroad, gave a confidence and credit to individual citizens heretofore unknown. This credit was improved, and goods were imported to a much greater amount than could be consumed, or paid for. The evils of this excess of importation were greatly aggravated by the decayed condition of the commerce, and the little attention which had been paid, during the war, to raising of articles for exports. The fisheries, which may be called the mines of Massachusetts, had been neglected, or but feebly improved, from the want of shipping and other causes. The whale fishery, which, from trifling beginnings in the year 1701, at length brought into the late Provinces no less a sum than 167,000 pounds sterling, annually, through the island of Nantucket alone, and which employed 150 sail of vessels, with near 2,500 seamen, was, at the opening of the peace, reduced to be the object of nineteen sail only. A great, if not a proportionable diminution, was visible in other articles of exportation. In addition to this, what few could be obtained were rendered almost useless by one of the severest effects of the Revolution-the loss. of many markets to which Americans had formerly resorted with their produce. Thus was the usual means of remittance by articles of the growth of the country almost annihilated, and little else than specie remained to answer the demands incurred by importations. The money, of course, was drawn off; and this being inadequate to the purpose of discharging the whole amount of foreign contracts, the residue was chiefly sunk by the bankruptcies of the importers. The scarcity of specie, arising principally from

« ZurückWeiter »