voices of the states, resolved that the bank should be incorporated so soon as the subscription should be filled and officers chosen. This vote was carried by New Hampshire, New Jersey, and the five southernmost states, Massachusetts being in the negative, Pennsylvania divided, and Madison alone of the four members from Virginia opposing it as not within the powers of the confederation. From the want of a valuation of private lands and buildings, congress had not even the right to apportion requisitions. The five states which met at Hartford had suggested for the United States an impost as a source of revenue. New Jersey and North Carolina suffered from the legislation of the neighboring states, which were the natural channels of a part of their foreign trade: on the third of February 1781, Witherspoon and Burke, their representatives in congress, reviving an amendment to the articles of confederation proposed by New Jersey in 1778,* moved to vest in the United States the power of regulating commerce according to "the common interest," and, under restrictions calculated to soothe state jealousies, the exclusive right of laying duties upon imported articles. This motion, which was a memorable step toward union, failed of success;† and on the same day congress contented itself with asking of the states, as an "indispensable necessity," the power to levy a duty of five per cent ad valorem on all imports, with no permanent exemptions except of wool cards and cotton cards, and wire for making them. This first scheme of duties on foreign commerce sought to foster American industry by the free admission of materials necessary to the manufacturer. The letter of the fifth of February from the state of New York was met on its way by the vote of congress of the third. In March, New York granted the duties, to "be collected in such manner and by such officers as congress should direct."‡ Connecticut had acted a month earlier at a special session called by Governor Trumbull, but had limited its grant to the end of the third year after the war.# New Hampshire fol * Journals of Congress, ii., 604. Papers of Old Congress, lxxv. + Ibid., iii., 573. # Journals of Congress, iii., 594, 600. Papers of Old Congress, lxxv. MS. VOL. VI.-4 lowed in the first week of April.* Massachusetts delayed its consent till the next year, and then reserved to itself the appointment of the collectors. Outside of the five states which met at Hartford, the first to agree to the new demand were Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The general assembly of Virginia, which was to have met in Richmond on the seventh of May, was chased by the enemy to Charlottesville, where it elected Benjamin Harrison its speaker, and where John Taylor of Caroline, according to order, presented a bill to enable the United States to levy the needed duty. Fleeing beyond the mountains, they completed the act at Staunton. The grant, of which Harrison had been the great promoter,# was restricted neither as to time nor as to form. Early in September, North Carolina adopted the measure; Delaware in November; South Carolina in February 1782; and Maryland in its following April session. The consent of Georgia was confidently expected. A After the surrender of Cornwallis, the legislature of New York once more declared the readiness of their state to comply with any measures to render the union of the United States more intimate, and to contribute their proportion of well-established funds. This alacrity Clinton, on the twenty-fourth of November, reported to congress as the highest "evidence of a sincere disposition in the state to promote the common interest."t Meantime the subscriptions to the bank languished, and Morris thought fit to apply to John Jay for money from the court of Madrid for its benefit, saying: "I am determined that the bank shall be well supported until it can support itself, and then it will support us." But there was no ray of hope * Papers of Old Congress, lxxiv., 9. MS. The act was of 5 April 1781. The act of New Jersey was passed 2 June 1781. Journal of House of Delegates, 30 May 1781. # Harrison to Washington 31 March 1783. Papers of Old Congress, lxxv., 359. ▲ Papers of Old Congress, lxxvi., 91. ◊ Papers of Old Congress, Ixvii., 438. Ibid., 443. Hening's Statutes at Large, x., 409. Morris to Jay, 13 July 1781. Dip. Cor., vii., 440 from that quarter. Though so late as October 1781 the subscription amounted to no more than seventy thousand dollars,* he was yet able to prevail with congress, on the thirty-first day of December, to incorporate the bank "forever" by the name of the Bank of North America; but it was not to exercise powers in any one of the United States repugnant to the laws or constitution of that state. But for this restriction Madison would have seen in the ordinance "a precedent of usurpation."+ The bank still wanted capital. During the autumn of 1781 a remittance in specie of nearly five hundred thousand dollars had been received from the king of France, and brought to Philadelphia. In January 1782, Morris, with no clear warrant, subscribed all of this sum that remained in the treasury, being about two hundred and fifty-four thousand dollars, to the stock of the bank,# which was thus nursed into life by the public moneys. In return, it did very little, and could do very little, for the United States. Its legal establishment was supported by a charter from the state of Massachusetts, in March 1782; by an act of recognition from Pennsylvania in March, and a charter on the first of April; and ten days later by a charter from New York. The final proviso of the New York charter was, "that nothing in this act contained shall be construed to imply any right or power in the United States in congress. assembled to create bodies politic, or grant letters of incorporation in any case whatsoever." The acts of Pennsylvania were repealed in 1785. Delaware gave a charter in 1786. The confederacy promised itself a solid foundation for a system of finance from a duty on imports. Through the press, Hamilton now pleads for vesting congress with full power of regulating trade; and he contrasts the "prospect of a number of petty states, jarring, jealous, and perverse, fluctuating and unhappy at home, weak by their dissensions in the eyes of other nations," with the "noble and magnificent perspective of a great federal republic." *Life of Morris, 81. + Ordinance to incorporate, etc. Journals of Congress, iii., 706, 707. # From the narrative of Robert Morris in Life of Morris, 90. | Jones & Varick's edition of Laws of New York, 1789, 77. It is the glory of New York that its legislature was the first to impart the sanction of a state to the great conception of a federal convention to frame a constitution for the United States. On the report of a committee of which Madison was the head, congress, in May 1782, took into consideration the desperate condition of the finances of the country, and divided between four of its members the office of explaining the common danger to every state.* At the request of the delegation which repaired to the North, Clinton convened an extra session of the senate and assembly of New York at Poughkeepsie, where, in July, they received from the committee of congress a full communication + "on the necessity of providing for a vigorous prosecution of the war." The legislature had been in session for a week when Hamilton, who for a few months filled the office of United States receiver of revenue for his state, repaired to Poughkeepsie "to second the views" of his superior. In obedience to instructions, he strongly represented "the necessity of solid arrangements of finance;" but he went to the work "without very sanguine expectations," for he believed that, "whatever momentary effort the legislature might make, very little would be done till the entire change of the present system;" and, before this could be effected, "mountains of prejudice and particular interest were to be levelled." + From On the nineteenth, three days after his arrival, on the motion of Schuyler, his father-in-law, who was ever constant in support of a national system, the senate resolved itself into "a committee of the whole on the state of the nation." its deliberations on two successive days a series of resolutions proceeded, which, as all agree, Hamilton drafted, and which, after they had been considered by paragraphs, were unanimously adopted by the senate. The house concurred in them without amendment and with equal unanimity. These resolutions as they went forth from the legislature find in the public experience "the strongest reason to apprehend from a continuance of the present constitution of the continental government a subversion of public credit," and a danger "to the safety and * Journals of Congress, 22 May and 15 and 18 July 1782. Clinton's message of 11 July 1782. Hamilton, i., 286, 288 independence of the states." They repeat the words of the Hartford convention and of Clinton, that the radical source of the public embarrassments had been the want of sufficient power in congress, particularly the power of providing for itself a revenue, which could not be obtained by partial deliberations of the separate states. For these reasons the legis lature of New York invite congress for the common welfare "to recommend and each state to adopt the measure of assembling a general convention of the states specially authorized to revise and amend the confederation, reserving a right to the respective legislatures to ratify their determinations." These resolutions the governor of New York was requested to transmit to congress and to the executive of every state. The legislature held a conference with Hamilton, as the receiver of revenue, but without permanent results; and it included him "pretty unanimously" in its appointment of delegates to congress for the ensuing year. On the fourth of August the resolutions for a federal convention were communicated by Clinton without a word of remark to the congress then in session. There, on the fifteenth, they were referred to a grand committee; but there is no evidence that that congress proceeded to its election. In his distress for money, Morris solicited a new French loan of twenty millions of livres. The demand was excessive: the king, however, consented to a loan of six millions for the year 1783, of which Franklin immediately received one tenth part. "You will take care," so Vergennes wrote to Luzerne, "not to leave them any hope that the king can make them further advances or guarantee for them new loans from others;" and he complained that the United States did not give sufficient proofs of their readiness to create the means for meeting their debts.t On the twenty-fourth of December the French auxiliary forces in the United States, except one regiment which soon followed, embarked at Boston for the West Indies. The affections, the gratitude, the sympathy, the hopes of America followed the French officers as they left her shores. What * MS. copy of the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of New York for the session of July 1782. Vergennes to Luzerne, 21 December 1782. |