King reserved his resolution to be brought forward as a separate measure, after the land ordinance should be passed. "I expect," wrote Grayson to Madison, "seven states may be found liberal enough to adopt it;"* but there is no evidence that it was ever again called up in that congress. On the twelfth of April† the committee for framing an ordinance for the disposal of the western lands made their report. It was written by Grayson, ‡ who formed it out of a conflict of opinions, and took the chief part in conducting it through the house. As an inducement for neighborhoods of the same religious sentiments to confederate for the purpose of purchasing and settling together, it was a land law for a people going forth to take possession of a seemingly endless domain. Its division was to be into townships, with a perpetual reservation of one mile square in every township for the support of religion, and another for education. The house refused its assent to the reservation for the support of religion, as connecting the church with the state; but the reservation for the support of schools received a general welcome. Jefferson had proposed townships of ten miles square; the committee, of seven; but the motion of Grayson, that they should be of six miles square,# was finally accepted. The South, accustomed to the mode of indiscriminate locations and settlements, insisted on the rule which would give the most free scope to the roving emigrant; and, as the bill required the vote of nine states for adoption, and during the debates on the subject more than ten were never present, the eastern people, though "amazingly attached to their own custom of planting by townships," yielded to the compromise that every other township should be sold by sections. The surveys were to be confined to one state and to five ranges, extending from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and were to be made under the direction of the geographer of the United States. The bounds of * Grayson to Madison, 1 May 1785. The ordinance for the sale of lands required the consent of nine states; the regulative ordinance, of but seven. + Grayson to Washington, 15 April 1785. The original report in the handwriting of Grayson is preserved in the Papers of Old Congress, lvi., 451. # Journals of Congress, iv., 512. Grayson to Madison, 1 May 1785. every parcel that was sold were fixed beyond a question; the mode of registry was simple, convenient, and almost without cost; the form of conveyance most concise and clear. Never was land offered to a poor man at less cost or with a safer title. For one bad provision, which, however, was three years after repealed, the consent of congress was for the moment extorted; the lands, as surveyed, were to be drawn for by lot by the several states in proportion to the requisitions made upon them, and were to be sold publicly within the states. But it was carefully provided that they should be paid for in the obligations of the United States, at the rate of a dollar an acre. To secure the promises made to Virginia, chiefly on behalf of the officers and soldiers who took part in conquering the Northwest from British authority, it was agreed, after a discussion of four days,* to reserve the district between the Little Miami and the Scioto. The land ordinance of Jefferson, as amended from 1784 to 1788, definitively settled the character of the national land laws, which are still treasured up as one of the most precious heritages from the founders of the republic. The frontier settlements at the west needed the protection of a military force. In 1784, soon after the exchange of the ratifications of peace, Gerry at Annapolis protested against the right of congress on its own authority to raise standing armies or even a few armed men in time of peace. His conduct was approved by his state, whose delegation was instructed to oppose and protest on all occasions against the exercise of the power. From that time congress had done no more than recommend the states to raise troops. It was now thought necessary to raise seven hundred men to protect the West. The recommendation should have been apportioned. among all the states; but congress ventured to call only on Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as the states most conveniently situated to furnish troops who were to be formed into one regiment and for three years guard the north-western frontiers and the public stores. CHAPTER IV. THE REGULATION OF COMMERCE. THE FIFTH CONGRESS. 1784-1785. THE legislature of Connecticut in 1783, angry at the grant of half pay to the officers of the army, insisted that the requisitions of congress had no validity until they received the approval of the state. But the vote was only "a fire among the brambles;" and the people at the next election chose a legislature which accepted the general impost on commerce, even though it should be assented to by no more than twelve states.* The Virginia assembly of that year discountenanced the deviation from the rule of unanimity as a dangerous precedent; but it was adopted by Maryland. ‡ In the following winter Noah Webster of Hartford busied himself in the search for a form of a continental government which should act as efficaciously on its members as a local government. "So long as any individual state has power to defeat the measures of the other twelve, our pretended union," so he expressed the opinion which began to prevail, " is but a name, and our confederation a cobweb. The sovereignty of each state ought not to be abridged in any article relating to its own government; in a matter that equally respects all the states, a majority of the states must decide. We cannot and ought not to divest ourselves of provincial attachments, but we should subordinate them to the general interest of the con * Monroe to Madison, 14 December 1784. Madison to Monroe, 24 December 1784. Madison, i., 114, 115. Act of Maryland. Session of 1784, 1785. In Pennsylvania Packet of 8 February 1785. tinent; as a citizen of the American empire, every individual has a national interest far superior to all others."* The outlays in America of the British in the last year of their occupation of New York, and the previous expenditures for the French army, had supplied the northern states with specie; so that purchasers were found for the bills of Robert Morris on Europe, which were sold at a discount of twenty or even forty per cent. The prospect of enormous gains tempted American merchants to import in one year more than their exports could pay for in three; while factors of English houses, bringing over British goods on British account, jostled the American merchants in their own streets. Fires which still burn were then lighted. He that will trace the American policy of that day to its cause must look to British restrictions and British protective duties suddenly applied to Americans as aliens. The people had looked for peace and prosperity to come hand in hand, and, when hostilities ceased, they ran into debt for English goods, never doubting that their wonted industries would yield them the means of payment as of old. But excessive importations at low prices crushed domestic manufactures; trade with the British West Indies was obstructed; neither rice, tobacco, pitch, turpentine, nor ships could be remitted as heretofore. The whale fishery of Massachusetts had brought to its mariners in a year more than eight hundred thousand dollars in specie, the clear gain of perilous labor. The export of their oil was now obstructed by a duty in England of ninety dollars the ton. Importations from England must be paid for chiefly by cash and bills of exchange. The Americans had chosen to be aliens to England; they could not complain of being taxed like aliens, but they awoke to demand powers of retaliation. The country began to be in earnest as it summoned congress to change its barren discussions for efficient remedies. The ever increasing voice of complaint broke out from the impatient commercial towns of the northern and central states. * Sketches of American Policy by Noah Webster, pp. 32-38. On the eleventh of January 1785, the day on which congress established itself in New York, the artificers, tradesmen, and mechanics of that city, as they gave it a welcome, added these brave words: "We hope our representatives will coincide with the other states in augmenting your power to every exigency of the union." The New York chamber of commerce in like manner entreated it to make the commerce of the United States one of the first objects of its care, and to counteract the injurious restrictions of foreign nations. † The New York legislature, then in session, imposed a double duty on all goods imported in British bottoms. + On the twenty-second of March 1785 a bill to "protect the manufactures" of Pennsylvania by specific or ad valorem duties on more than seventy articles, among them on manufactures of iron and steel, was read in its assembly for the second time, debated by paragraphs, and then ordered to be printed for public consideration.# The citizens of Philadelphia, recalling the usages of the revolution, on the second of June held a town-meeting; and, after the deliberations of their committee for eighteen days, they declared that relief from the oppressions under which the American trade and manufactures languished could spring only from the grant to congress of full constitutional powers over the commerce of the United States; that foreign manufactures interfering with domestic industry ought to be discouraged by prohibitions or protective duties. They raised a committee to lay their resolutions in the form of a petition before their own assembly, and to correspond with committees appointed elsewhere for similar purposes. On the twentieth of September, after the bill of the Pennsylvania legislature had been nearly six months under consideration by the people, and after it had been amended by an increase of duties, especially on manufactures of iron, and by a discriminating tonnage duty on ships of nations having no treaty of commerce with congress, it became a law with general acclamation. *MS. vol. of Remonstrances and Addresses, 343. MS. vol. of Remonstrances and Addresses, 351. Chief Justice Smith's extract of letters from New York. MS. # Pennsylvania Packet, 13 May 1785. The Act appears in full in Pennsylvania Packet of 22 September 1785. Van Berckel's report to the States-General, 4 October 1785. |