been taken; nor had the custom then been introduced of calling upon the treasurer and the auditor for approximating statements of the population of the State. One of the most eloquent friends of the Constitution, who had served in Congress, and who at the time held a high office in the Commonwealth, made a mistake of 212,000 in his estimate of the people of Virginia; or, supposing he had excluded the seven Kentucky counties, which were as much a part of Virginia as Accomac and Henrico, and are enumerated as such in the census of 1790, and which he did not exclude, his mistake would still underrate the population more than 129,000, or more than one-fifth of the whole number. And when the trade and business of the country were represented in Convention as sunk to the lowest ebb, one of the opponents of the Constitution could only affirm that several American vessels had recently doubled the Cape of Good Hope.

But there were signs of prosperity obvious to the most careless observer The increased production of agriculture, the immense quantities of lumber which employed a heavy tonnage, the vast commerce which filled our ports and rivers, and which was growing with every year, could hardly fail to attract observation The imposing picture of a single seaport of Virginia, which had in the space of four years risen from ashes to a prominence which it had not attained during a century and a half of colonial rule, was a living witness of developed wealth, of successful enterprise, and of good government, and afforded a cheerful omen of the future. Such indications of prosperity, if not unheeded, were wrongly interpreted. Eminent statesmen, forgetting what a short time before was the condition of a country in which nearly all regular agricultural labor had for a series of years been suspended, which was girt by independent States, whose interests, if not positively hostile, were, as must always be the case with independent powers not identical with its own, and which was called for the first time to arrange and settle a general policy of trade and business with commodities beyond its borders, were annoyed and perplexed by a state of things that frequently exists in the oldest country, that time and experience would insensibly adjust, and which domestic legislation might at any moment remove. It is one of the pregnant lessons of history, that public men on the stage often overlook or slight in great emergencies the salient facts of their generation, and in the

haste of the hour take refuge from pressing difficulties in a system of measures which seem plausible at the time, which offer the chances of a favorable change, and which posterity is left to deplore. Overawed by those outward aspects of affairs which assail the common eye, they do not reflect that the common eye, even if it saw clearly, sees but a small part of a great empire; that what it does see it sees often through a distorted medium, and that it can embrace, at the farthest, only a few, and those lying on the surface of those innumerable elements which compose the prosperity of a Commonwealth. No people rising suddenly from a state of control which their fathers and themselves had endured for almost two centuries into a new complicated sphere, and capable of taking the full measure of their own stature, or the true dimensions of their own era. Of all the sciences which act on the business of life, the science of political economy was least studied by the statesmen of that age. Every question of law and politics relating to men and communities, every question that pertained directly to the rights of person and property, had been critically studied by our fathers, and were discussed with an ability that made the dialectics of the Revolution as distinctive as the wisdom which declared independence, or the valor which achieved it. But the problems of political economy had never engaged their deliberate attention. That science had but recently taken its separate station in English literature, for the Wealth of Nations was its text-book, and Adam Smith had not published the Wealth of Nations three years before the meeting of the first Congress. Nor were the doctrines of the new science readily received. Practical men, then as now, viewed them with disgust, and some of the British politicians of that day never read them at all. If, many years later, when its theories were expounded in Parliament and from the chairs of the schools, Charles James Fox was not ashamed to say that he had never read the Wealth of Nations, it is no reflection upon our fathers that they had not studied a science which they had no opportunity of knowing, and which had a slight bearing only on colonial legislation. But the science of political economy is only the philosophy drawn from the experience of men in their commercial relations with one another; and with some of those relations our fathers had an intimate acquaintance. It is creditable to Virginia that, though some of

her famed sons did not comprehend or disregarded the teachings of the new science, others who had for a quarter of a century, in peace and war, mainly guided her destinies, had read them wisely.

The unfortunate delusion in respect of the commerce of Virginia, which then prevailed, led to disastrous results. It kept alive in our early councils those dissensions which existed before the war began, which raged fiercely during its continuance, which, coming down to our own times, had nearly kindled the flames of civil war, but which otherwise might have ended with the eighteenth century. It led, in the vain hope of sudden improvement, to the hasty adoption of the present Federal Constitution without previous amendments, and to the surrender of the right of regulating its commerce by the greatest State of the Confederation to an authority beyond its control. It led to a state of things of which our fathers did not dream, and which, if they could behold, would make them turn in their graves. It destroyed our direct trade with foreign powers. It banished the flag of Virginia from the seas. Instead of building and manning the ships which carried the product of our labor to foreign ports, and which brought back the product of the labor of others to our own ports, as some were persuaded to believe would be the result of the change, it compelled us thenceforth to commit our produce to the ships of other States, and to receive our foreign supplies through other ports than our own. It brought about the strange result that, instead of a large part of the cost of defraying the expenses of the Government of Virginia being derived from the duties levied upon foreign commerce, those duties, though levied upon a scale unknown in that age, will not suffice, in this sixty-ninth year of the new system, to pay the expenses of collection by other hands than our own.

25

It is due to the memory of our fathers to inquire, and it is the province of history to record, how far such a result could have been foreseen at the time; for the decision of the question has no unimportant bearing upon the reputation of the men who upheld or opposed the system from which such a revolution was

25 In a manuscript letter of Edmund Pendleton, dated December 4, 1792, in my possession, that illustrious jurist says: "Five per cent. seemed to have been fixed on, as a standard of moderation, by the general consent of America." This entire letter is devoted to the subject of the tariff.

26

destined to proceed; and we fitly pause in our narrative to say a few words on the subject. It is singular that, when the Federal Constitution was presented for their consideration, our fathers had already been more familiar with the theory of Federal systems than any public men of that generation. Of the ablest men, who, more than ten years before, either aided in framing the Articles of Confederation in Congress, who discussed them in the General Assembly, who ratified them in behalf of Virginia in Congress, and who watched their operation in Congress and in the Assembly, nearly all were then living. One of them, whose immortal name is appended to those Articles, had published his opinions on the new system. Several members of Congress were members of the present Convention. When those Articles were maturing in Congress, and were afterwards discussed in the General Assembly, the distinctive merits of the Federal schemes recorded in history were freely canvassed. It was soon seen that history, in its long roll of nations which have coalesced from motives of gain, ambition, or self-defense, afforded no model of a Federal alliance which was suited to the existing emergency, and that the problem was to be solved for the occasion. It was only from general reasoning, drawn from the nature of independent States, that our fathers could arrive at their conclusions. And that reasoning was this: The right to regulate the trade and commerce of a State is, in fact, the right to control its industry, to direct its labor, and to wield its capital at will. It was one of those exclusive rights of sovereignty that are inseparable from its being, and that no State can commit to the discretion of another; for no State whose industry is controlled by another, can be said to be free. To raise what products we please, to send them, in our own way, to those who are willing to take them, and to receive in exchange such commodities as we please, and those commodities to be free from all burdens, except such as we choose to put upon them, is a right which no people should voluntarily relinquish, and which no people ever relinquished but to a conquerer. A small State may, indeed, coalesce with a larger, and on certain conditions may

26 Letter of R. H. Lee to Governor Randolph, Elliott's Debates, Vol. I, 502, edition of 1859; objections of George Mason, Ibid., 494; Edmund Randolph's letter to the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Ibid., 482.

derive benefit from so intimate an alliance. The gain from an equal participation in the trade of the buyer, and a sense of security from their united strength, may be deemed a fair equivalent for the risks which it runs. But it is plain that the benefits of such a coalition depend wholly on the good faith of the stronger party; and the rights of the weaker are enjoyed by the courtesy of the stronger. To hold the most precious rights at the discretion of another was a dangerous experiment; and experience has shown that no such union has ever been voluntarily made. No confederacy, in ancient or in modern times, was ever formed on so intimate a union of its several parts, and the unusual experience of mankind should seem to forbid it.

But if it be dangerous for a smali State to form so intimate an alliance with a greater, it follows that it is equally dangerous for a large State to coalesce, not with a smaller, or a series of smaller ones, whose combined strength is inferior to its own, but with a series of States whose strength exceeds its own, whose voices can control the common counsels, and whose interests can apply the common resources at discretion. In such a case, the large State sinks its independent position, and has no more conclusive control of its own affairs than the humblest member of the association. Hence, the record of civilized States affords no instance of such an alliance. Guided by these principles, our fathers determined to form a Federal alliance more intimate, indeed, than any which has come down to us, but to reserve a conclusive control over the trade and the commerce of Virginia. They were willing to surrender the sword, but they retained the purse in their own keeping.

Of all alliances between independent States in ancient or in modern times, the Articles of Confederation presented the fairest model of a Federal system. It raised the admiration of Europe, strangely mingled with surprise. For a single province, or more provinces than one, to cast off allegiance to a distant power, was no uncommon incident in modern times. But to form a Federal alliance, which bestowed with a liberal hand upon the central executive all the powers which the general interests demanded, and yet guarded with consummate skill the integrity and independence of the component parts, was a brilliant achievement. Its reception by the people was joyous. At a later period, when its workings had been observed more closely, the