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this cause, was attended with evident consequences; it checked commercial intercourse throughout the community, and furnished reluctant debtors with an apology for withholding their dues both from individuals and the public.

Here again it is apparent that the parent source of the deteriorated condition of affairs was the enormous influx of foreign goods, with its necessary sequence, the exhaustive draining away of specie. Under the protective system, the large capital embodied in metallic money would have remained at home sufficiently to have established domestic manufactures on a firm footing; to have supplied earnings and purchasing power to the people kept idle by the free trade policy; to have created a profitable market for the farmer's produce; to have facilitated all the transactions of business; and to have served as a solid basis for a paper currency, had that become needful. The wild mania for speculation, which characterized those early days, was the natural offspring of the precarious nature of what, under different circumstances, would have been remunerative investments in reproductive industry. Capital assumes risks only when security is unattainable, as it then was. This evil would have vanished had appropriate laws been passed to secure to the people the full advantages and benefits of their home market. As this history advances, it will be seen that a craze for rashly adventurous speculation was a salient feature of every period cursed with free trade principles, and that its extent was greatest when the amount of protection was least. When the avenues to solid business enterprise are obstructed or closed, the restless activity of the human mind seeks a vent in all other directions; for it will sink down into stagnation only through compulsion. So soon as the

government provides it with the bulwarks of safety, it turns with zeal, vigor, and persistence to legitimate undertakings.

CHAPTER V.

UNDER THE CONFEDERATION - CONTINUED.

In every quarter of the Confederation the same scenes of distress and demoralization were to be witnessed. A common cause of disaster had produced a common affliction. The newspapers in all the States teemed with discussions of proposed remedies for the destructive consequences which had fallen upon the character of the country, and upon the prosperity and happiness of its citizens. One writer in the New Hampshire Gazette, July 20, 1786, bitterly complained of "the bondage of the people of New Hampshire; for, in the midst of life, they are in death,' death of the worst kind, penury and want of the common blessings of Providence. How long, freemen of New Hampshire, can ye bear the yoke of oppression!" Belknap, in the second volume of his "History of New Hampshire," swells the general emphasis of the testimony. Beginning on page 352, he thus details the process by which the people had been brought into such depths of universal embarrassment, distress, and wretchedness.

A large debt, accumulated by the war, remained to be discharged. For this purpose, requisitions were made by Congress, as well as by the State government. Silver and gold, which had circulated largely in the latter years of the war, were returning, by the usual course of trade, to those countries whence large quantities of necessary and unnecessary commodities had been imported. HAD

ANY GENERAL SYSTEM OF IMPOST BEEN ADOPTED, SOME PART OF THIS MONEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN RETAINED, AND SOME PART OF THE PUBLIC DEBT DISCHARGED; but the power of Congress did not extend to this object; and the States were not united in the expediency

of delegating new and sufficient powers to that body. The partial imposts, laid by some of the States, were ineffectual as long as others found their interest in omitting them. Recourse, therefore, was had to the usual mode of taxation on polls and estates, by which means a heavy burden was laid on the husbandman and the laborer. Those who were punctual in their payments saw no probable end of their exertions, whilst the negligence of others occasioned repeated demands. Private creditors, who had suffered by long forbearance, were importunate for their dues, and the courts of law were full of suits.

The people who felt themselves distressed held conferences with a view to devise means of redress. The remedy which appeared to many of them most easy was a new emission of paper bills, funded on real estate, and loaned on interest. To effect this, petitions were addressed to the Legislature; and, to remedy the grievance, as far as it was occasioned by a debt of the State, an act was passed to draw into the Treasury all notes issued by the State, and give certificates for the interest, and for fifteen per cent of the principal, annually; which certificates were to be received by the Treasurer for taxes, "in lieu of and equal to silver and gold." By this means it was expected that the debt would gradually be extinguished, and that the people would easily be enabled to pay at least one species of their taxes.

Beginning on page 355, Belknap particularizes some of the extreme measures which popular clamor and the severity of the emergency compelled several of the Legislatures to adopt, in an attempt to alleviate the intolerable situation of the community. He says:

Similar difficulties, at the same time, existed in the neighboring State of Massachusetts, to remedy which, among other palliatives, a law was passed called a tender act, "by which it was provided that executions issued for private demands might be satisfied by cattle and other enumerated articles, at an appraisement of impartial men under oath." For such a law the discontented party in New Hampshire petitioned; and to gratify them, the Legislature enacted, that "when any debtor shall tender to his creditor, in

satisfaction of an execution for debt, either real or personal estate sufficient, the body of the debtor shall be exempt from imprisonment, and the debt shall carry an interest of six per cent, the creditor being at liberty either to receive the estate, so tendered, at a value estimated by three appraisers, or to keep alive the demand by taking out an alias, within one year after the return of any former execution, and levying it on any estate of the debtor which he can find." At the same time an act was made, enlarging the power of Justices of the Peace to try and determine actions of debt and trespass to the value of ten pounds. These laws were complained of as unconstitutional; the former as being retrospective, and changing the nature of contracts; the latter as depriving the creditor, in certain cases, of a right to trial by jury. But so strong was the clamor for redress of grievances, and so influential was the example of the neighboring State, that some of the best men in the Legislature found it necessary to comply, whilst another part were secretly in favor of worse measures.

These large concessions to the debtor class did not bring the expected relief, because they did not touch the real cause of the universal distress. Matters went from bad to worse in New Hampshire, as they did in all other parts of the Confederation. Then additional efforts were made to stem the rising current of disaster. Several of these are outlined by Belknap on page 357, as follows:

The scarcity of money was still a grievance which the laws had not remedied, but rather had a tendency to increase. To encourage its importation into the country, the Legislature exempted from all port duties, except light-money, every vessel which should bring gold and silver only; and from one half of the duties, if a sum of money equal to one half of the cargo should be imported. But it was to no purpose to import money, unless encouragement were given for its circulation, which could not be expected whilst the tender act was in force; for every man who owned money thought it more secure in his own hands than in the hands of others.

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