A few months later (July 10, 1783), this was superseded by another and much more comprehensive act.1

This laid "an impost" on all goods "that shall be brought into this Commonwealth by land or water (except hemp and salt and such articles as are the manufacture and growth of the United States of America) that shall be landed or unloaded within the same."

An exception was made in favor of "Rum manufactured within this Commonwealth," sold "to be exported by land into a neighboring State."

"2

The act was to be in force for three years only.

The next year this exception was repealed, but with a proviso in favor of goods imported "belonging to a subject of any other State in the Union, and designed to be exported whole and entire to such State by water only," but "no subject of any other State in the Union" was to be "entitled to the benefit of the foregoing provision, unless there be an Act laying duties of impost of equal amount within such State; nor until the legislature of such State shall have passed a law, equally beneficial to the subjects of this Commonwealth." 8

The comparative ease of the burden which is laid on the people in general by taxes on imports was as well understood then as now. Each state was also bidding for foreign trade. There was legislation by Connecticut in the direction of exempting foreign imports from duties, while imposing them on those from other states. One of these statutes, entitled "An Act for Levying and collecting a Duty on certain Articles of Goods, Wares and Merchandize imported into this State, by Land or Water," concerned only goods "imported or brought into this State, by Land or Water, from any of the United States of America." This legislation bore hardly on Massachusetts, and the General Court of that state soon afterwards (on June 27, 1785) passed a Resolution entitled as "Requesting the Governor to procure the laws of other States, to publish an abstract of customs and duties, and to expostulate with other States respecting their Excise Acts," which contained the following provision:

"And it is further Resolved, That his Excellency be requested to expostulate with such of the United States, as have passed Impost and Excise

1 Session Laws of 1783, State Reprint, 506.

8 Session Laws of 1784, State Reprint, 29.

2 Ibid. 519.

4 Session Laws of May, 1784, 268, 270; and of October, 1784, 312.

Acts, or other Laws for the Regulation of Trade, that affect the commercial interest of the citizens of this State, and to urge the propriety of their making such alterations and amendments, as shall render them not only conformable to the spirit of the Constitution, but consistent with those principles of reciprocity which in a national view, ought ever to be adopted."

Governor Bowdoin accordingly wrote to the Governor of Connecticut, on July 27, 1785, a letter commencing thus:

"I have observed a law passed by the Legislature of Connecticut, whereby a duty is laid on goods imported into that State from any of the United States, while the same goods are exempted from a duty if imported into that State from a foreign country. This distinction, so manifestly giving a preference to foreigners in prejudice to the United States, it is to be feared, may be construed as indicating an abatement of that mutual affection and good humour which subsisted among them in the time of their calamity & distress; which was indispensibly necessary while they were jointly struggling against common injury, and which will be equally necessary while they continue, as they at present are, embarked in the same common interest and exposed to common danger.

"But the Act above referd to not only injures in its operation the foreign commerce of this Commonwealth, but prevents its citizens from vending articles of their own manufacture to the citizens of Connecticut. This must be considered as the more exceptionable, inasmuch as for the sake of cementing the Union which is the true policy of the confederated Commonwealth, our laws exact no duties on the manufactures of any of the United States, and in regard to commerce their citizens respectively stand upon a footing with our own.

" 1

A copy of this communication and also of the legislative resolution was sent by Governor Bowdoin to every other state of the United States. The object of this action he explained more fully to Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia in an official letter of October 18, 1785, of which the following is a part:

"One of the States had passed an Act laying duties on foreign goods imported from any of the United States, while the same goods imported immediately from foreign countries were not chargeable with such duties. By the same Act duties were also laid on rum, loaf sugar, and several other articles which are manufactured in this Commonwealth. A preference thus given to foreigners to the prejudice of the United States, or either of them, appeared very extraordinary. This Commonwealth felt itself affected, both as a member of the Confederacy and as an individual State charged with duties

16 Collections of the Mass. Hist. Soc., 7th Series, 62.

on its own manufactures, whereby its citizens would probably be prevented from vending them to the citizens of a sister State. The measure appeard the more grievous, because the laws of this Commonwealth require no duties on the manufactures of any of the United States, and their citizens respectively are in point of commerce on a footing here with our own. The Act aforementioned gave rise to the Resolution. Your Excy. will perceive it must particularly apply to that State. Accordingly an expostulatory letter was addressed to that State only. But as it must, in the opinion of every one, be a matter of the utmost importance to the United States that each of them should carefully avoid taking measures which might give just cause of offence to others & tend to the interruption of that harmony & mutual good will upon which the general safety & wellfare depends, I took the liberty to inclose it to the several States; being fully perswaded that if any of them should think proper to revise their commercial laws, and should thereupon observe an instance of such a nature & tendency, it would be alterd or repeald."

Undoubtedly this correspondence was before the Virginia Assembly when, in November, 1785, they voted to instruct their delegates in Congress to propose a recommendation to the states that they should authorize Congress to regulate their trade on certain principles, one of which was thus stated:

"That no State be at liberty to impose duties on any goods, wares or merchandise, imported, by land or by water, from any other State, but may altogether prohibit the importation from any State of any particular species or description of goods, wares or merchandise, of which the importation is at the same time prohibited from all other places whatsoever." "

On reconsideration, this vote gave place to the resolution under which (Jan. 21, 1786) the Annapolis Convention was called.3

It may be added that Massachusetts, pending the result of her Governor's expostulations, suspended, from time to time, the proviso of her impost statute above quoted in favor of subjects of other states of the United States.*

The last of these suspending resolutions (which were passed on July 4 and Dec. 1, 1785, and Feb. 28 and July 8, 1786), " in order to induce a free trade with the interior parts of our neighboring States," allowed an exemption from excise of all articles "transported out of the State by land" in bond.

16 Collections of the Mass. Hist. Soc., 7th Series, 76.

21 Elliot's Debates 114.

3 Ibid. 115.

• Session Laws of 1785, State Reprint, 656, 698, 809, 859; ibid. of 1786, 67.

In 1786 (Nov. 18) all these acts were repealed by a new law, in which, among other things, boots and shoes, artificial flowers, playing cards, perfumery, children's toys, spelling books, novels, romances, and plays, coffin furniture, candles, butter, and all kinds of wearing apparel, "not being the growth or manufacture of any of the United States of America," were "declared to be contraband, and are prohibited from being brought into this State by land or water, on pain of forfeiture." Goods imported "belonging to a Citizen of any other State in the Union" and "transported whole and entire to such State" were exempted from any duty.1

On March 14, 1788, an act was passed reciting that many bonds had been given "to secure the import of goods imported into this Commonwealth" by citizens of other states, which "were afterwards exported to those States where the owners lived," and ordering the cancellation of their obligations, on satisfactory proof that such goods were in fact "Exported out of this Commonwealth and not relanded therein." 2

In the same month and year, Maryland, to protect the people and markets of the town of Baltimore, provided for the inspection of all salted beef or fish "brought or imported into the said town from any part of this State or any one of the United States, or from any foreign port whatever." The importer was to pay the inspection fee, and the professed object was to make it secure that the beef or fish was merchantable and sound.3

It is difficult to read statutes like those above described, and particularly such parts of them as have been quoted, without coming to the opinion that the terms "exports" and "imports" were deemed by the legislators of the day, if not otherwise qualified, as covering exports from and imports into the states of the Union, whether the trade were between the states or with foreign parts.

In the discussions in the Federal Convention of 1787, on the proposition that Congress should be forbidden to tax articles. exported from any state, Mr. Langdon of New Hampshire observed that this left the states at liberty to tax exports, and that "New Hampshire therefore, with the other non-exporting States, will be subject to be taxed by the States exporting its produce." 5

1 Session Laws, State Reprint, 117.

2 Session Laws of 1787, State Reprint, 839.

3 2 Laws of Maryland, 1811 Ed., Maxcy's Revision, 4.

• As was done in the Act of Congress of April 18, 1783. 8 Journal of Congress 186. 65 Elliot's Debates 454.

Ellsworth replied that the power of Congress to regulate trade between the states would protect them against each other, but, if not, the attempts of one to tax the produce of another passing through its hands would "force a direct exportation and defeat themselves." Madison insisted that a grant to Congress of

power

to tax exports was necessary, because its power to regulate “trade between State and State cannot effect more than indirectly to hinder a State from taxing its own exports." This hindrance Congress could create by authorizing the citizens of any state "to carry their commodities freely into a neighboring State, which might decline taxing exports, in order to draw into its channel the trade of its neighbors. As to the fear of disproportionate burdens on the more exporting States, it might be remarked that it was agreed, on all hands, that the revenue would principally be drawn from trade, and as only a given revenue would be needed, it was not material whether all should be drawn wholly from imports, or half from those and half from exports. The imports and exports must be pretty nearly equal in every State, and, relatively, the same among the different States."1

Later, when Mason argued that the states ought not to be prohibited in all cases from laying "imposts or duties on imports," since they might need to do so in order to encourage certain manufactures for which they had natural advantages, Madison replied that "the encouragement of manufactures in that mode requires duties, not only on imports directly from foreign countries, but from the other States in the Union, which would revive all the mischiefs experienced from the want of a general government over commerce." 2

It must not be forgotten that at this era the several states were, in abstract theory, complete and independent sovereigns. Each was foreign to every other in everything, notwithstanding the political alliance between them. From the earliest colonial times the commercial policy of each had been self-centered. Connecticut, before 1650, had taxed the produce of Massachusetts on its way down the Connecticut river to the ocean, and Massachusetts, in retaliation, had taxed all exports from Massachusetts Bay or imports into Boston harbor of goods owned by citizens of the other New England colonies. Early in the next century New York (in 1734)

* The Secession of Springfield from Connecticut, 2 Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 55.