Minot, in his "History of the Insurrections in Massachusetts," page 27, summing up the causes of public disorder, proceeds as follows:

From the short view which we have taken of the affairs of the Commonwealth, sufficient causes appear to account for the commotions which ensued. A heavy debt lying on the State, added to burdens of the same nature upon almost every incorporation within it; a decline, or rather an extinction, of public credit; a relaxation of manners, and a free use of foreign luxuries; a decay of trade and manufactures, with a prevailing scarcity of money; and, above all, individuals involved in debt to each other, are evils which leave us under no necessity of searching further for the reasons of the insurrections which took place.

Chief-Justice Marshall says, in the fifth volume of his "Life of Washington," page 112:

This disorderly resentment was cherished by unlicensed conventions, which, after voting their own constitutionality, and assuming the name of the people, arrayed themselves against the Legislature, and detailed at great length the grievances by which they alleged themselves to be oppressed. Its hostility was principally directed against the compensation promised to the officers of the army, against taxes, and against the administration of justice; and the circulation of a depreciated currency was required, as a relief from the pressure of public and private burdens which had become, it was alleged, too heavy to be borne. Against lawyers and courts the strongest resentment was manifested; and to such a dangerous extent were these dispositions indulged, that, in many instances, tumultuous assemblages of the people arrested the course of law, and restrained the judges from proceeding in the execution of their duty. The ordinary recourse to the power of the country was found an insufficient security, and the appeals made to reason were attended with no beneficial effect. The forbearance of the government was attributed to timidity rather than to moderation, and the spirit of insurrection appeared to be organized with a regular system for the suppression of the courts.

Testimony to the same general effect is obtainable

from all the sources of information which have been preserved. Everywhere throughout the Confederation were to be seen centrifugal tendencies in powerful operation, threatening in the end to disrupt the Union, and even to split some of the States into fragments, with the result of antagonistic governments, mutual antipathies, discordant relations, and dangerous disputes among petty, weak, jealous States, whereas a community of reciprocities and a recognized interdependence were essential to secure efficacy and permanence to the objects of the Revolution. The correspondence between the public men of that day abounds with expressions of foreboding, alarm, and almost of despair. Henry Lee, Jr., wrote to Washington, October 17, 1786:

General Knox has just returned, and his report, grounded on his own knowledge, is replete with melancholy information. A majority of the people of Massachusetts are in opposition to the government. Some of the leaders avow the subversion of it to be their object, together with the abolition of debts, the division of property, and a reunion with Great Britain. In all the Eastern States the same temper prevails more or less, and will certainly break forth whenever the opportune moment may arrive. The malcontents are in close connection with Vermont, and that district, it is believed, is in negotiation with the government of Canada. In a word, my dear General, we are all in dire apprehension that a beginning of anarchy, with all its calamities, is made, and we have no means to stop the dreadful work.

William Grayson wrote to Monroe, November 22,1786:

The disturbances in Massachusetts bay have been considerable, and absolutely threaten the most serious consequences. It is supposed the insurgents are encouraged by emissaries of a certain nation, and that Vermont is in the association. How it will end, God only knows; the present prospects are, no doubt, extremely alarming.

David Ramsey wrote to Jefferson, April 7, 1787:

Our governments in the Southern States are much more quiet than in the Northern, but much of our quiet arises from the temporizing of the Legislature in refusing legal protection to the prosecution of the just rights of the creditors. Our eyes now are all fixed on the Continental Convention to be held in Philadelphia in May next. Unless they make an efficient federal government, I fear that the end of the matter will be an American monarchy, or rather, three or more confederacies.

Washington, in numerous letters to his friends, showed how keenly he felt solicitude and apprehension, as may be seen in the following extracts:

To Thomas Johnson, November 12, 1786:

The want of energy in the federal government; the pulling of one State and parts of States against another; and the commotions among the eastern people, have sunk our national character much below par, and have brought our politics and credit to the brink of a precipice. Liberality, justice, and unanimity in those States which do not appear to have drunk so deep of the cup of folly may yet retrieve our affairs, but no time is to be lost in essaying the reparation of them.

To David Stuart, November 19, 1786:

However delicate the revising of the federal system may appear, it is a work of indispensable necessity. The present constitution is inadequate; the superstructure is tottering to its foundation, and without helps will bury us in its ruins.

To Edmund Randolph, November 19, 1786:

Our affairs seem to be drawing to an awful crisis; it is necessary, therefore, that the abilities of every man should be drawn into action in a public line, to rescue them, if possible, from impending ruin.

To John Jay:

What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of. a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, and thence to acting is often but a single step.

To Colonel Humphries:

For God's sake tell me what is the cause of all these com motions? Do they proceed from licentiousness, British influence disseminated by the Tories, or real grievances which admit of redress? If the latter, why was redress delayed until the public mind had become so much agitated? If the former, why are not the powers of government tried at once? It is as well to be without, as not to exercise them. Commotions of this sort, like snow-balls, gather strength as they roll, if there is no opposition in the way to divide and crumble them.

To Colonel Humphries:

It is but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions under which we now live-constitutions of our own choice and making—and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them.

Such were throughout the Confederation, and such always have been in other countries, the results of freetrade principles in the culminating stages of their operation. Step by step the movement of the country was constantly retrograde, proceeding through ruinously excessive importations to a pinching shrinkage of home industry and of employment for domestic labor; then to an exhaustive draining away of specie, until the people were almost entirely without a circulating medium; then to sore and exasperating distress for lack of money, and to unendurable pressure in the relation of debtor and creditor, with widely extending impoverishment; then to resentful discontent, weakened respect for the law and its tribunals, decay of allegiance, loss of confidence between man and man, and an unloosening of societary ties; then to turbulence, open antagonism to the constituted authorities, insurrectionary commotions, and an appeal to arms

in search of unattained redress. Had there been no free trade, there would have been no inundation of foreign goods; had there been no inundation of foreign goods, there would have been no drain of specie; had there been no drain of specie, there would have been no distress from lack of a circulating medium; had there been no such distress, there would have been no impulse toward insubordination to the State. As the first drink leads on to a settled habit of tippling, and thence, unless arrested by reform, to penury, disease, and a drunkard's grave, so free trade led on, by a succession of downward stages, to the finality of open revolt. The starting-point was free trade; the outcome was rebellion, and an imperious necessity to resort for deliverance to the protective system. Had no radical corrective been speedily applied, the centrifugal tendencies must soon have become so much stronger than the centripetal or unifying ones, that the Confederation would have been shattered into fragments-into a number of distinct, discordant, petty, weak, poverty-stricken States, and there would have been a most inglorious end to the once promising experiment of political liberty. As there was the closest approach to absolute free trade ever tried by this country, so there was the largest harvest of calamities and dangers ever experienced by the American people. That awful crisis, at the outset of our career as an independent nation, should be regarded as a monument erected by the sufferings of our forefathers to warn posterity against the delusive and mischievous plausibilities of the free-trade policy. Had the lesson taught by the almost fatal experience of those early years been duly appreciated, instead of being forgotten or ignored, the United States would have been kept out