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 The acts of Pennsylvania were repealed in 1785.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. 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., 285, 283. 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 legislature 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 dele"in gates 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.+ 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. boundless services they had rendered in the establishment of her independence! What creative ideas they were to carry home! How did they in later wars defy death in all climes, from San Domingo to Moscow and to the Nile, always ready to bleed for their beautiful land, often yielding up their lives for liberty! Rochambeau, who was received with special honor by Louis XVI., through a happy accident escaped the perils of the revolution, and lived to be more than fourscore years of age. Viomenil, his second in command, was mortally wounded while defending his king in the palace of the Tuileries. De Grasse died before a new war broke out. For more than fifty years Lafayette-in the states general, in convention, in legislative assemblies, at the head of armies, in exile, in cruel and illegal imprisonment, in retirement, in his renewed public life, the emancipator of slaves, the apostle of free labor, the dearest guest of America-remained to his latest hour the true and the ever hopeful representative of loyalty to the cause of liberty. The Viscount de Noailles, who so gladly assisted to build in America the home of human freedom for comers from all nations, was destined to make the motion which in one night swept from his own country feudal privilege and personal servitude. The young Count Henri de Saint-Simon, who during his four campaigns in America mused on the neverending succession of sorrows for the many, devoted himself to the reform of society, government, and industry. Dumas survived long enough to take part in the revolution of July 1830. Charles Lameth, in the states general and constituent assembly, proved one of the wisest and ablest of the popular party, truly loving liberty and hating all excesses in its name. Alexander Lameth, acting with the third estate in the states general, proposed the abolition of all privileges, the enfranchisement of every slave, and freedom of the press; he shared the captivity of Lafayette in Olmütz, and to the end of his life was a defender of constitutional rights. Custine of Metz, whose brilliant services in the United States had won for him very high promotion, represented in the states general the nobility of Lorraine, and insisted on a declaration of the rights of man. Of the Marquis de Chastellux Washington said: "Never have I parted with a man to whom my soul clave more sincerely." His philanthropic zeal for "the greatest good of the greatest number" was interrupted only by an early death. Let it not be forgotten that Sécondat, a grandson of the great Montesquieu, obtained promotion for good service in America. Nor may an Amercan fail to name the young Prince de Broglie, though he arrived too late to take part in any battle. In the midday of life, just before he was wantonly sent to the guillotine, he said to his child, then nine years old, afterward the self-sacrificing minister, who kept faith with the United States at the cost of popularity and place: "My son, they may strive to draw you away from the side of liberty, by saying to you that it took the life of your father; never believe them, and remain true to its noble cause." At the time when the strength which came from the presence of a wealthy and generous ally was departing, the ground was shaking beneath the feet of congress. Pennsylvania, the great central state, in two memorials offered to congress the dilemma, either to satisfy its creditors in that state, or to suffer them to be paid by the state itself out of its contributions to the general revenue. The first was impossible; the second would dissolve the union. Yet it was with extreme difficulty that Rutledge, Madison, and Hamilton, a committee from congress, prevailed upon the assembly of Pennsylvania to desist for the time from appropriating funds raised for the confederation. + The system for revenue by duties on importations seemed now to await only the assent of Rhode Island. That commonwealth in 1781 gave a wavering answer; and then instructed its delegates in congress to uphold state sovereignty and independence. On the first of November 1782 its assembly unanimously rejected the measure for three reasons: the impost would bear hardest on the most commercial states, particularly upon Rhode Island; officers unknown to the constitution would be introduced; a revenue for the expenditure of which congress is not to be accountable to the states would * Sparks, viii., 367. + Gilpin, 199, 216, 224, 488; Journals of Congress, 4 December 1782; Minutes of Assembly of Pennsylvania for 1782, pp. 663, 675, 733. VOL. VI.-3 |