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spirit of England. Before the end of three years of peace, all respect and regard for America were changed into bitter discontent at its independence, and a disbelief in its capacity to establish a firm government. The national judgment and popular voice, as expressed in pamphlets, newspapers, coffeehouses, the streets, and in both houses of parliament, had grown into an unchangeable determination to maintain against them the navigation acts and protective duties, and neither the administration nor the opposition had a thought of relaxing them. Great Britain was sure of its power of attracting American commerce, and believed that the American states were not, and never could be, united. All this had been so often affirmed by the refugees, and Englishmen had so often. repeated them to one another, that to argue against it was like breathing against a trade wind. "I may reason till I die to no purpose," wrote Adams; "it is unanimity in America which will produce a fair treaty of commerce." Yet he presented to Carmarthen a draft of one, though without hope of success. It rested on principles of freedom and reciprocity, and the principles of the armed neutrality with regard to neutral vessels.

Like Franklin, like Jefferson, like Madison, he was at heart for free trade. "I should be sorry," said he to his friend Jefferson, "to adopt a monopoly, but, driven to the necessity of it, I would not do things by halves." "If monopolies and exclusions are the only arms of defence against monopolies and exclusions, I would venture upon them without fear of offending Dean Tucker or the ghost of Doctor Quesnay." "But means of preserving ourselves can never be secured until congress shall be made supreme in foreign commerce." +

On the twenty-fourth of August, when the adjournment of parliament brought leisure, Adams, then fifty years of age, met the youthful prime minister of Britain. Pitt, as any one may see in his portrait at Kensington, had in his nature far more of his mother than of the great Englishman who was his father. He had pride, but suffered from a feebleness of will which left

* Adams to Jay, 26 June 1785. Works, viii., 276.
Adams to Jefferson, 7 August 1785. Works, viii., 292.
Adams to John Jay, 10 August, ibid., 299, 300.

him the prey of inferior men. His own chosen measures were noble ones-peace, commercial relations with France, the improvement of the public finances, the payment of the national debt. In the ministry of Shelburne, he had brought in a bill to promote commerce with America by modifying the navigation act; in his own he abandoned the hopeless attempt.

Reverting to the treaty of commerce which Adams had proposed, Pitt asked: "What are the lowest terms which will content America?" Adams replied that the project he had communicated would secure the friendship of the United States and all the best part of their trade; the public mind of America is balancing between free trade and a navigation act; and the question will be decided now by England; but if the Americans are driven to a navigation act, they will become attached to the system. "The United States," answered Pitt, "are forever become a foreign nation; our navigation act would not answer its end if we should dispense with it toward you." "The end of the navigation act," replied Adams, "was to confine the commerce of the colonies to the mother country; if carried into execution against us, now that we are become independent, instead of confining our trade to Great Britain, it will drive it to other countries." "You allow we have a right

to impose on you our navigation act," said Pitt. "Certainly," answered Adams, "and you will allow we have a corresponding right." "You cannot blame Englishmen," said Pitt, "for being attached to their ships and seamen." "Indeed, I do not," answered Adams; "nor can you blame Americans for being attached to theirs." Pitt then asked plainly: "Can you grant by treaty to England advantages which would not become immediately the right of France?" "We cannot," answered Adams; "to the advantage granted to England without a compensation France would be entitled without a compensation; if an equivalent is stipulated for, France, to claim it, must allow us the same equivalent." Pitt then put the question: "What do you think that Great Britain ought to do?" And Adams answered: "This country ought to prescribe to herself no other rule than to receive from America everything she can send as a remittance; in which case America will take as much of British productions as she can pay for."

There were mutual complaints of failure in observing the conditions of the peace. Pitt frankly declared "the carrying off of negroes to be so clearly against the treaty that England must satisfy that demand;" but he took no step toward satisfying it. The British government, yielding to the impor tunity of merchants, and especially of fur-traders, kept possession of the American posts at the West. This was a continuance of war; but Pitt excused it on the ground that, in Virginia and at least two other states, hindrances still remained in the way of British creditors. Congress was sincere in its efforts to obtain for them relief in the courts of the states; but it wanted power to enforce its requisitions. Moreover, the Virginia legislature, not without a ground of equity, delayed judgment against the Virginia debtors until an offset could be made of the indemnity which Pitt himself had owned to be due to them for property carried away by the British in disregard of the treaty of peace. The holding of the western posts had no connection with this debt and no proportion to it; for the profits of the fur trade, thus secured to Great Britain, in each single year very far exceeded the whole debt of which the collection was postponed.

The end of the interview was, that Pitt enforced the navigation acts of England against America with unmitigated severity. For the western posts, Haldimand, as his last act, had strengthened the garrison at Oswego, and charged his successor to exclude the Americans from the enormously remunerative commerce in furs by restricting transportation on the lakes to British vessels alone.* In February of the next year, the British secretary of state announced that the posts. would be retained till justice should be done to British creditors. +

"They mean," wrote Adams, "that Americans should have no ships, nor sailors, to annoy their trade." "Patience will do no good; nothing but reciprocal prohibitions and imposts will have any effect." He counselled the United States as their only resource to confine their exports to their own ships and

* Haldimand to St. Leger, November 1784; Sidney to St. Leger, 30 April 1785, and other letters of the like tenor.

Carmarthen to Adams, 28 February 1786.

encourage their own manufactures, though he foresaw that these measures would so annoy England as in a few years to bring on the danger of war.

*

The French government could not be induced to change its commercial system for the sake of pleasing the United States; it granted free ports; but the Americans wanted not places of deposit for their staples, but an open market. On one point only did Vergennes bestow anxious attention. He feared the United States might grant favors to England; and, at the request of France, congress, when preparing to treat with the nations of Europe, gave assurance that it would "place no people on more advantageous ground than the subjects of his most Christian Majesty." Through the French envoy in America, Vergennes answered: "This declaration, founded on the treaty of the sixth of February 1778, is very agreeable to the king; and you can assure congress that the United States shall constantly experience a perfect reciprocity in France." +

Jefferson, as minister, obtained a great reduction of the duty on American oil manufactured from fish; ‡ but he was compelled to hear thrice over complaints that the trade of the United States had not learned the way to France; and thrice over that the French government could not depend on engagements taken with the United States. Complaints, too, were made of the navigation acts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, not without hints at retaliation.

While some of the states of Europe forgot their early zeal to form commercial relations with the United States, the convention for ten years with Frederic of Prussia, to whose dispatch, intelligence, and decision Adams bore witness, was completed in May 1785, and in the following May was unanimously ratified by congress. Free vessels made free goods. Arms, ammunition, and military stores were taken out of the class of contraband. In case of war between these two parties, merchant vessels were still to pass unmolested. Privateering was pronounced a form of piracy. Citizens of the one country

* Adams to Jay, 30 August and 15 October 1785. Works, viii., 313 and 321. Diplomatic Correspondence, ii., 33, 34, 36.

Ibid., ii., 491, 492.

domiciled in the other were to enjoy freedom of conscience and worship, and, in case of war between the two parties, might still continue their respective employments.

Spain had anxieties with respect to its future relations with America, and thought proper to accredit an agent to congress; but neither with Spain, nor with France, nor with England. was there the least hope of forming liberal commercial relations. American diplomacy had failed; the attempt of the fifth congress to take charge of commerce had failed; the movement for a federal convention, which was desired by the mercantile class throughout the union, had failed; but encouragement came from South Carolina. William Moultrie, its governor, gave support to Bowdoin of Massachusetts, saying: "The existence of this state with every other as a nation depends on the strength of the union. Cemented together in one common interest, they are invincible; divided, they must fall a sacrifice to internal dissensions and foreign usurpations." * The heart of American statesmen beat high with hope and resolution. "It is my first wish," wrote Jay, the American secretary for foreign affairs, in 1785, "to see the United States assume and merit the character of ONE GREAT NATION." "It has ever been my hobbyhorse," wrote John Adams early in 1786, while minister of the United States in England, "to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them."+

The confederation framed a treaty with the emperor of Morocco; it was not rich enough to buy immunity for its ships from the corsair powers of Barbary.

Through congress no hope for the regeneration of the union could be cherished. Before we look for the light that may rise outside of that body, it will be well to narrate what real or seeming obstacles to union were removed or quieted, and what motives compelling the forming of a new constitution sprung from the impairment of the obligation of contracts by the states.

* Moultrie to Bowdoin, 10 September 1785.

+ Life of John Jay by his son, i., 190.

The Life and Works of John Adams, ix., 546.

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