gregations in the midst of great forests with scores of horses tied to the trees." They had delight in the beauties of Nature, and knew how to extract "from them all the sweetness they are capable of yielding." The Methodists did not come to rend an empire in twain, nor to begin a long series of wars which should shatter the civil and the religious hierarchies of former centuries, nor to tumble down ancient orders by some new aristocracy of the elect. Avoiding metaphysical controversy and wars of revolution, they came in an age of tranquillity when the feeling for that which is higher than man had grown dull; and they claimed it as their mission to awaken conscience, to revive religion, to substitute glowing affections for the calm of indifference. They stood in the mountain forests of the Alleghanies and in the plains beyond them, ready to kindle in emigrants, who might come without hymn-book or bible, their own vivid sense of religion; and their leaders received from all parts, especially from Kentucky, most cheering letters concerning the progress of the cause in the "new western world." At peace with the institutions of the country in which they prospered, they were the ready friends to union.

America was most thoroughly a Protestant country. The whole number of Catholics within the thirteen states, as reported by themselves, about the year 1784, was thirty-two thousand five hundred. Twenty thousand, of whom eight thousand were slaves, dwelt in Maryland. The four southernmost states had but two thousand five hundred; New England but six hundred; New York and New Jersey, collectively, only seventeen hundred. Pennsylvania and Delaware, lands of tolerance, had seven thousand seven hundred. The French Catholics settled between the western boundary of the states and the Mississippi were estimated at twelve thousand more.*

The rancor of the Jesuits against the house of Bourbon for exiling them from France and Spain was relentless. The Roman Catholic clergy in the insurgent British colonies had been superintended by a person who resided in London; and during the war they were directed by Jesuits who favored the British. The influences which in South America led to most

* Marbois to Vergennes, 27 March 1785.

disastrous results for Spain were of little consequence in the United States. It was Franklin's desire to do away with this influence unfriendly to France. The Roman see proceeded with caution; and a letter from its nuncio at Paris, on the appointment of a bishop in the United States, was communicated to congress. In May 1784 they, in reply, expressed a readiness to testify respect to the sovereign and the state represented by the nuncio, but, disavowing jurisdiction over a purely spiritual subject, referred him to the several states individually.*

The British crown, and, at a later period, British legisla tion, had arbitrarily changed the grants of territory held under the several colonial charters. Nearly three years before the preliminary treaty of peace, New York, to facilitate union among the United States of America, led the way of relinquishing pretensions to any part of the lands acquired by the treaty of peace. Virginia, which had a better claim to western territory, resigned it for the like purpose, reserving only a tract between the Scioto and the Miami as an indemnity for the expenses of its conquest. Massachusetts persisted in no claim except to the ownership of lands in New York. The charter of Connecticut carried its line all the way to the Pacific ocean; with great wariness Roger Sherman, so Grayson relates, connected the cession of the claims of his state with the reserve of a district in the north-east of Ohio. The right of Connecticut to a reservation was denied by Grayson, and, in Sherman's absence from congress, stoutly and successfully defended by Johnson. A small piece of land between the line of New York and the eastern line of the Connecticut reserve remained to the United States. Pennsylvania purchased the land and obtained of congress a willing cession of the jurisdiction, thus gaining access to the lake and the harbor of Erie. South Carolina had certain undefined rights to territory in the West; she ceded them without qualification to the United States. The rights of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia to extend to the Mississippi, like the right of Massachusetts to the lands in Maine, were unquestioned. In this manner the * Franklin's Works, ix., 548. Diplomatic Correspondence, iv., 158, 159. Se. cret Journals of Congress, iii., 493.

public domain, instead of exciting animosities and conflicting claims between rival states or between individual states and the general interest, served only to bind the members of the confederacy more closely together by securing one vast territory in the West extending from the Ohio to the Lake of the Woods, to be filled, under the laws of the United States, alike by emigrants from them all.

A more serious matter was that of the customs. New York had yielded to the temptation to establish a custom-house for the sole benefit of its own treasury. Richard Henry Lee taught the authors of the measure that they were defending the rights of the states, and preserving congress from the corrupting influence of an independent revenue. Comforted by these opinions of an eminent statesman whom congress had raised to its presidency, New York persisted in treating the revenue levied on the commerce of its port as its own; and here was a real impediment to union.

Sadder was the institution of slavery; for the conflicting opinions and interests involved in its permanence could never be reconciled.

CHAPTER VI.

STATE LAWS IMPAIRING THE OBLIGATION OF CONTRACTS PROVE THE NEED OF AN OVERRULING UNION.

BEFORE MAY 1787.

A BRILLIANT artist has painted Fortune as a beautiful woman enthroned on a globe, which for the moment is at rest, but is ready to roll at the slightest touch. A country whose people are marked by inventive genius, industry, and skill, whose immense domain is exuberantly fertile, whose abounding products the rest of the world cannot dispense with, may hold her fast, and seat her immovably on a pedestal of four square sides.

The thirteen American states had a larger experience of the baleful consequences of paper money than all the world besides. As each of them had a legislation of its own, the laws were as variant as they were inconvenient and unjust. The shilling had differing rates from its sterling value to an eighth of a dollar. The confusion in computing the worth of the currency of one state in that of another was hopelessly increased by the laws, which discriminated between different kinds of paper issued by the same state; so that a volume. could hardly hold the tables of the reciprocal rates of exchange. Moreover, any man loaning money or making a contract in his own state or in another, was liable at any time to loss by some fitful act of separate legislation. The necessity of providing effectually for the security of private rights and the steady dispensation of justice, more, perhaps, than anything else, brought about the new constitution.*

*Gilpin, 804; Elliot, 162.

No sooner had the cry of the martyrs of Lexington reached Connecticut than its legislature put forth paper money for war expenses, and continued to do so till October 1777. These were not made legal tender in private transactions,* and there were no other issues till 1780.

In October of that year the legislature of the state, once for all, interposed 'itself between the creditor and debtor. It discriminated between contracts that were rightly to be paid in gold and silver and contracts understood to be made in paper currency, whether of the continent or of the state. A pay-table for settling the progressive rate of depreciation was constructed; and, to avoid the injustice which might come from a strict application of the laws, it gave to the court authority through referees, or, if either party refused a reference, by itself, to take all circumstances into consideration, and to determine the case according to the rules of equity.†

In this wise the relations between debtor and creditor in Connecticut were settled summarily and finally, and no room left for rankling discontent. The first of the New England states to issue paper money on the sudden call to arms was the first to return to the use of coin. The wide-spread movements of 1786 for the issue of paper money never prevailed within its borders. Its people, as they were frugal, industrious, and honest, dwelt together in peace, while other states were rent by faction.

Massachusetts, after the downfall of the continental paper, returned to the sole use of gold and silver in contracts; but its statesmen had before them a most difficult task, for the people had been tempted by the low prices of foreign goods to run into debt, and their resources, from the interruption of their sale of ships and fish-oil in England, of fish and lumber in the British West Indies, and from the ruin of home manufacturers by the cheapness of foreign goods, were exhausted. While it established its scale of depreciation, it did not, like Connecticut, order an impartial and definitive settlement between the creditor and debtor, but dallied with danger. In July 1782 it allowed, for one year, judgments to be satisfied

*Bronson's Connecticut Currency, 137.

Laws of Connecticut, ed. 1786, 49, 50,