from importing into the United States any merchandise not the produce or manufacture of such country. There was already before the States, as we have seen, in the revenue system of 1783, a proposal to them to vest in Congress power to levy certain duties on foreign commodities, for the same period; and if these two grants of power had been made, and made promptly, by the States, Congress would have possessed, for a time, an effectual control over commerce, and the practical means of forming suitable commercial treaties.

But the proposal of the 30th of April, 1784, met with a tardy and reluctant attention among the States. Only one of them had acted upon it, as late as the following February, when the delegates for Maryland laid before Congress an act of that State upon the subject.2 New Hampshire was the next State to comply, in the succeeding June.3 In the mean time, however, Congress prepared to prosecute negotiations in Europe, trusting to the chances of an enlargement of their powers, in pursuance of their recommendation. Accordingly, they proceeded, in the spring of 1784, to appoint a commission to negotiate commercial treaties, and settled the principles on which such treaties were to be formed. The leading principle then determined on was, that each party to the treaty should have a right to carry their own produce, manufactures, and merchandise

1 April 30, 1784.

2 February 14, 1785. Journals, X. 53.

3 By an act passed June 2223, 1785; laid before Congress October 10, 1785. Ibid. 353.

in their own bottoms to the ports of the other, and to take thence the produce, manufactures, and merchandise of the other, paying, in both cases, such duties only as were paid by the most favored nation. The resolves appointing the commission also contained a very explicit direction, that "the United States, in all such treaties, and in every case arising under them, should be considered as one nation, upon the principles of the Federal Constitution."1 Yet the Federal Constitution did not, at that very moment, make the United States one nation for this purpose. Its principles gave to Congress no authority which could prevent the States from prohibiting any exportations or importations whatever, as to their respective territories; and the validity of these treaties, thus proposed to be negotiated with fifteen European powers, depended altogether upon the precarious assent of the thirteen States to the alterations in the principles of the Federal Constitution which Congress had proposed.

That assent was not likely to be given, so as to become effectual for the purposes for which it had been asked. The action of the States was found, in the spring of 1786, to present a mass of incongrui

1 The commission consisted of Mr. John Adams, then at the Hague, Dr. Franklin, then in France, and Mr. Jefferson, then in Congress. Mr. Jefferson sailed from Boston on the 5th of July, and arrived in Paris on the 6th of August, 1784. (Works, I. 49.) The powers with whom they were to nego

tiate commercial treaties were Russia, Austria, Prussia, Denmark, Saxony, Hamburg, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Genoa, Tuscany, Rome, Naples, Venice, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Porte. Secret Journals, III. 484-489. May 7, 1784.

ties, which rendered the whole scheme of thus increasing the federal powers almost hopeless. Four of the States had passed laws, conforming substantially to the recommendations of Congress, but restraining their operation until the other States should have complied. Three of the States had passed the requisite acts, and had fixed different periods at which they were to take effect.2 One State had granted full powers to regulate its trade, by restrictions or duties, for fifteen years, with a proviso that the law should be suspended until all the other States had done the same. Another State had granted power, for twenty-five years, to regulate trade between the respective States, and to prohibit or regulate the importation only of foreign goods in foreign vessels, but restricting the operation of the act until the other States had passed similar laws. Still another State had granted powers like the last, but without limitation of time, and with the proviso that, when all the other States had made the same grants, it should become an Article of the Confederation.5 The three remaining States had passed no act upon the subject. Upon these conflicting and irreconcilable provisions, Congress could take no other action, than to call the attention of the States again to the original proposal, and request them to revise their laws."

While this discordant legislation was manifesting at home the entire impracticability of amending the Federal Constitution by means of the separate action of the State legislatures, the commissioners abroad were engaged in efforts, nearly as fruitless, to negotiate the treaties which they had been instructed to make. The commission was opened at Paris on the 13th of August, 1784, and its objects announced to the different governments. France was not disposed to change the existing relations. England perceived the real want of power in the federal government, and recognized nothing in the commission but the fact that it had been issued by Congress, while the separate States had conferred no powers upon either Congress or the commissioners.1 Prussia alone entered into a

1 The Duke of Dorset, the English Ambassador at Paris, wrote to the commissioners (March 26, 1785) as follows: "Having communicated to my court the readiness you expressed in your letter to me of the 9th of December to remove to London, for the purpose of treating upon such points as may materially concern the interests, both political and commercial, of Great Britain and America; and having at the same time represented that you declared yourselves to be fully authorized and empowered to negotiate, I have been, in answer thereto, instructed to learn from you, gentlemen, what is the real nature of the powers with which you are invested, whether you are merely commissioned by Congress, or

whether you have received separate powers from the respective States. A committee of North American merchants have waited upon his Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to express how anxiously they wished to be informed upon this subject; repeated experience having taught them in particular, as well as the public in general, how little the authority of Congress could avail in any respect, where the interest of any one individual State was even concerned, and particularly so where the concerns of that State might be supposed to militate against such resolutions as Congress might think proper to adopt. The apparent determination of the respective States to reg

treaty, upon some of the principles laid down in the commission, and soon after it was executed, the com missioners ceased to do any thing whatever.1

During the period which elapsed from the Treaty of Peace with England to the assembling of the Convention at Annapolis, the legislation of the different States, designed to protect themselves against the policy of England, was of course without system or concert, and without uniformity of regulation. At one time duties were made extravagantly high; at another, competition reduced them below the point at which any considerable revenue could be derived At one time, the States acted in open hostility to each other; at another, they contemplated commercial leagues, without regard to the prohibition contained in the Articles of Confederation. No steady system was pursued by any of them, and the inefficacy of State legislation became at length so apparent, that a conviction of the necessity of new powers in Congress forced itself upon the public mind.

ulate their own separate interests renders it absolutely necessary, towards forming a permanent system of commerce, that my court should De informed how far the commissioners can be duly authorized to enter into any engagements with Great Britain, which it may not

be in the power of any one of the States to render totally fruitless and ineffectual." Diplomatic Correspondence, II. 297.

1 Jefferson's Works, I. 50, 51. The whole proceedings of this commission may be found in the Diplomatic Correspondence, II. 193-346.