Pennsylvania had been cheered on its way by voices from Boston. On the eighteenth of April the merchants and trades. men of that town, meeting in Faneuil Hall, established a committee of correspondence with merchants of other towns, bound themselves not to buy British goods of resident British factors, and prayed congress for the needed immediate relief.* Their petition was reserved by congress for consideration when the report of its committee on commerce should be taken up. The movement in Boston penetrated every class of its citizens; its artisans and mechanics joined the merchants and tradesmen in condemning the ruinous excess of British importations. To these proceedings Grayson directed the attention of Madison.† On the tenth of May the town of Boston elected its representatives to the general court, among them Hancock, whose health had not permitted him to be a candidate for the place of governor. Two years before, Boston, in its mandate to the men of its choice, had, in extreme language, vindicated the absolute sovereignty of the state; the town, no longer wedded to the pride of independence, instructed its representatives in this wise: Peace has not brought back prosperity; foreigners monopolize our commerce; the American carrying trade and the American finances are threatened with annihilation; the government should encourage agriculture, protect manufactures, and establish a public revenue; the confederacy is inadequate to its purposes; congress should be invested with power competent to the wants of the country; the legislature of Massachusetts should request the executive to open a correspondence with the governors of all the states; from national unanimity and national exertion we have derived our freedom; the joint action of the several parts of the union can alone restore happiness and security. No candidate for the office of governor of Massachusetts having for that year received a majority of the votes of the people, the general court, in May 1785, made choice of James Bowdoin, a veteran statesman who thirty years before had distinguished himself in the legislature by a speech in favor of the union of the colonies. He had led one branch of Grayson to Madison, 1 May 1785. * Journals of Congress, iv., 516, 517. Boston Town Records. MS. VOL. VI.-11 the government in its resistance to British usurpations; and, when hostilities broke out, he served his native state as president of its supreme executive council till the British were driven from the commonwealth. His long years of public service had established his fame for moderation, courage, consistency, and uprightness. A republican at heart, he had had an important share in framing the constitution of Massachusetts. In his inaugural address he scorned to complain of the restrictive policy of England, saying rather: Britain and other nations have an undoubted right to regulate their trade with us; and the United States have an equal right to regulate ours with them. Congress should be vested with all the powers necessary to preserve the union, manage its general concerns, and promote the common interest. For the commercial intercourse with foreign nations the confederation does not sufficiently provide. "This matter," these were his words, "merits your particular attention; if you think that congress should be vested with ampler powers, and that special delegates should be convened to settle and define them, you will take measures for such a convention, whose agreement, when confirmed by the states, would ascertain those powers." In reply, the two branches of the legislature jointly pledged "their most earnest endeavor" to establish "the federal government on a firm basis, and to perfect the union;" and on the first day of July the general court united in the following resolve: "The present powers of the congress of the United States, as contained in the articles of confederation, are not fully adequate to the great purposes they were originally designed to effect."* That the want of adequate powers in the federal government might find a remedy as soon as possible, they sent to the president of congress, through their own delegation, the resolution which they had adopted, with a circular letter to be forwarded by him to the supreme executive of each state; and they further "directed the delegates of the state to take the earliest opportunity of laying them before congress, and making every exertion to carry the object of them into effect." + *Massachusetts Resolve, lxxvi., in Resolves, July 1785, 38, 39. * In concert with New Hampshire, and followed by Rhode Island, they passed a navigation act forbidding exports from their harbors in British bottoms, and establishing a discriminating tonnage duty on foreign vessels; but only as "a temporary expedient, until a well-guarded power to regulate trade shall be intrusted to congress." + Domestic manufactures were protected by more than a fourfold increase of duties; and "congress was requested to recommend a convention of delegates from all the states to revise the confederation and report how far it may be necessary to alter or enlarge the same, in order to secure and perpetuate the primary objects of the union." # In August, the council of Pennsylvania and Dickinson, its president, in a message to the general assembly, renewed the recommendation adopted in that state two years before, saying: "We again declare that further authorities ought to be vested in the federal council; may the present dispositions lead to as perfect an establishment as can be devised." || To his friend Bowdoin John Adams wrote: "The Massachusetts has often been wise and able; but she never took a deeper measure than her late navigation act. I hope she will persist in it even though she should be alone." A The nation looked to congress for relief. In 1776 James Monroe left the college of William and Mary to enter the army; when but nineteen he gained an honorable wound and promotion; and rapidly rose to the rank of colonel. Jefferson in 1781 described him as a Virginian "of abilities, merit, and fortune," and as "his own particular friend."◊ In 1782 he was of the assembly of Virginia; and was chosen at three-andtwenty a member of the executive council. In 1783 he was elected to the fourth congress, and at Annapolis saw Washing *Annual Register, xxvii., 356. Pennsylvania Packet of 18 July 1785 has the Massachusetts act, and of 20 July that of New Hampshire. + Bowdoin's circular of 28 July, enclosing the act. MS. Bradford's Massachusetts, ii., 244; Pennsylvania Packet, 19 July 1785. # Massachusetts Resolves, lxxvi., 1 July 1785. Resolves of the General Court, P 38. 523. | Minutes of Pennsylvania Council, 25 August 1785. Colonial Records, xiv. ▲ Adams to Governor Bowdoin, 2 September 1785. MS. ◊ Jefferson to Franklin, 5 October 1781. ton resign his commission. When Jefferson embarked for France, he remained, not the ablest, but the most conspicuous representative of Virginia on the floor of congress. He sought the friendship of nearly every leading statesman of his commonwealth; and every one seemed glad to call him a friend. It was hard to say whether he was addressed with most affection by Jefferson or by John Marshall. His ambition made him jealous of Randolph; the precedence of Madison he acknowledged, yet not so but that he might consent to become his rival. To Richard Henry Lee he turned as to one from whose zeal for liberty he might seek the confirmation of his own. Everybody in Virginia resented the restrictive policy of England. Monroe, elected to the fifth congress, embarked on the tide of the rising popular feeling. He was willing to invest the confederation with a perpetual grant of power to regulate commerce; but on condition that it should not be exercised without the consent of nine states. He favored a revenue to be derived from imports, provided that the revenue should be collected under the authority and pass into the treasury of the state in which it should accrue.* He from the first applauded the good temper and propriety of the new congress, the comprehensiveness of mind with which they attended to the public interests, and their inclination to the most general and liberal principles, which seemed to him "really to promise great good to the union." They showed the like good-will for him. On bringing forward the all-important motion on commerce, they readily referred it to himself as the chief of the committee, with four associates, of whom Spaight from North Carolina, and Houston from Georgia, represented the South; King of Massachusetts, and Johnson of Connecticut, the North. The complaisant committee lent their names to the proposal of Monroe, whose report was read in congress on the twenty-eighth of March. It was to be accompanied by a * Monroe to Jefferson, 14 December 1784. Sparks, ix., 503, gives the report in its first form; his date, however, is erroneous, from a misunderstanding of a letter of Grayson, in Letters to Washington, iv., 102, 103. The day on which the report was made is not certain; the day letter to be addressed to the legislatures of the several states explaining and recommending it; and the fifth day of April was assigned for its consideration. But it was no part of Monroe's plan to press the matter for a decision. "It will be best," so he wrote to Jefferson, "to postpone this for the present; its adoption must depend on the several legislatures. It hath been brought so far without a prejudice against it. If carried farther here, I fear prejudices will take place. It proposes a radical change in the whole system of our government. It can be carried only by thorough investigation and a conviction of every citizen that it is right. The slower it moves on, therefore, in my opinion, the better."* † Jefferson, as he was passing through Boston on his way to France, had shown pleasure at finding "the conviction growing strongly that nothing could preserve the confederacy unless the bond of union, their common council, should be strengthened." He now made answer to the urgent inquiries of Monroe: "The interests of the states ought to be made joint in every possible instance, in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to congress as their head." He approved Monroe's report without reservation; but wished it adopted at once, "before the admission of western states.” ‡ Months passed away, but still the subject was not called up in congress; and the mind of Monroe as a southern statesman became shaken. The confederation seemed to him at present but little more than an offensive and defensive alliance, and if the right to raise troops at pleasure was denied, merely a defensive one. His report would put the commercial economy of every state entirely and permanently into the hands of the on which it was read was certainly the 28th of March. The report of the committee is in the volume, "Reports of Committees on Increasing the Powers of Congress," p. 125, with a copy in print. The few corrections that have been made in the copy are in the handwriting of Monroe. The State Dept. MS. copy is indorsed: Report of Mr. Monroe, Mr. Spaight, Mr. Houston, Mr. Johnson, Mr. King. See 11 March-to grant congress power of regulating trade. Entered-read 28 March 1785. Tuesday, April 5, assigned. * Monroe to Jefferson, New York, 12 April 1785. Jefferson to Madison, Boston, 1 July 1784. Jefferson to Monroe, Paris, 17 June 1785. Jefferson, i., 347. |