Such was the issue between the ancient nation which falsely and foolishly and mischievously believed that its superiority in commerce was due to artificial legislation, and a young people which solicited free trade. Yet thrice blessed was this assertion of monopoly by an ignorant parliament, for it went forth as a summons to the commercial and the manufacturing interests of the American states and to the self-respect and patriotism of their citizens to speak an efficient government into being. Full of faith in the rising power of America, Jay, on the seventeenth of July, wrote to Gouverneur Morris: "The present ministry are duped by an opinion of our not having union and energy sufficient to retaliate their restrictions. No time is to be lost in raising and maintaining a national spirit in America. Power to govern the confederacy as to all general purposes should be granted and exercised. In a word, everthing conducive to union and constitutional energy should be cultivated, cherished, and protected."* Two days later he wrote to William Livingston of New Jersey: "A continental, national spirit should pervade our country, and congress should be enabled, by a grant of the necessary powers, to regulate the commerce and general concerns of the confederacy." On the same day, meeting Hartley, the British envoy, Jay said to him: "The British ministry will find us like a globe-not to be overset. They wish to be the only carriers between their islands and other countries; and though they are apprized of our right to regulate our trade as we please, yet I suspect they flatter themselves that the different states possess too little of a national or continental spirit ever to agree in any one national system. I think they will find themselves mistaken." "The British ministers," so Gouverneur Morris in due time replied to Jay, "are deceived, for their conduct itself will give congress a power to retaliate their restrictions. This country has never yet been known in Europe, least of all to England, because they constantly view it through a medium of prejudice or of faction. True it is that the general gov ernment wants energy, and equally true it is that this want Sparks's Life of G. Morris, i., 258. * Jay to G. Morris, 17 July 1783. † Gouverneur Morris to Jay, 24 September 1783. Sparks's G. Morris, i., 259. VOL. VI.-4 will eventually be supplied. Do not ask the British to take off their foolish restrictions; the present regulation does us more political good than commercial mischief."* On the side of those in England who were willing to accept the doctrines of free trade, Josiah Tucker, the dean of Gloucester, remarked: "As to the future grandeur of America, and its being a rising empire, under one head, whether republican or monarchical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that ever was conceived even by writers of romance. The mutual antipathies and clashing interests of the Americans, their difference of governments, habitudes, and manners, indicate that they will have no centre of union and no common interest. They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever; a disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, they will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths or principalities, according to natural boundaries, by great bays of the sea, and by vast rivers, lakes, and ridges of mountains." + The principle of trade adopted by the coalition ministry Sheffield set forth with authority in a pamphlet, which was accepted as an oracle. "There should be no treaty with the American states because they will not place England on a better footing than France and Holland, and equal rights will be enjoyed of course without a treaty. The nominal subjects of congress in the distant and boundless regions of the valley of the Mississippi will speedily imitate and multiply the examples of independence. It will not be an easy matter to bring the American states to act as a nation; they are not to be feared as such by us. The confederation does not enable congress to form more than general treaties; when treaties become necessary, they must be made with the states separately. Each state has reserved every power relative to imposts, exports, prohibitions, duties, etc., to itself. If the American states choose to send consuls, receive them and send a consul to each state. Each state will soon enter into all necessary *Gouverneur Morris to Jay, 10 January 1784. Ibid., 266, 267. Dean Tucker's Cui Bono, 1781, 117-119. Sheffield's Commerce of the American States, 183, 190, 191, 198-200. * regulations with the consul, and this is the whole that is necessary. The American states will not have a very free trade in the Mediterranean, if the Barbary states know their interests. That the Barbary states are advantageous to the maritime powers is certain; if they were suppressed, little states would have much more of the carrying trade. The armed neutrality would be as hurtful to the great maritime powers as the Barbary states are useful." + In London it was a maxim among the merchants that, if there were no Algiers, it would be worth England's while to build one. + Already the navigation act was looked to as a protection to English commerce, because it would require at least three fourths of the crews of American ships to be Americans; and they pretended that during the war three fourths of the crews of the American privateers were Europeans. The exclusion of European seamen from service in the American marine was made a part of British policy from the first establishment of the peace. In August, Laurens, by the advice of his associates, came over to England to inquire whether a minister from the United States of America would be properly received. "Most undoubtedly," answered Fox, and Laurens left England in that belief. But the king, when his pleasure was taken, said: "I certainly can never express its being agreeable to me; and, indeed, I should think it wisest for both parties to have only agents who can settle any matters of commerce. That revolted state certainly for years cannot establish a stable government." A The plan at court was to divide the United States, and for that end to receive only consuls from each one of the separate states and not a minister for the whole. ◊ British statesmen had begun to regret that any treaty whatever had been made with the United States collectively; they would have granted independence and peace, but without *Sheffield's Commerce of the United States, 277. Ibid., 204, 205, note. Franklin in Diplomatic Correspondence, iv., 149. #Sheffield's Commerce of the American States, 205, note. | Diplomatic Correspondence, ii., 510–515. A King to Fox, 7 August 1783; Memorials of Fox, ii., 141. further stipulations of any kind, so that all other questions might have been left at loose ends. Even Fox was disinclined to impart any new life to the provisional articles agreed upon by the ministry which he supplanted. He repeatedly avowed the opinion that "a definitive treaty with the United States was perfectly superfluous." * The American commissioners became uneasy; but Vergennes pledged himself not to proceed without them,† and Fox readily yielded. On the third of September, when the minister of France and the ambassadors of Great Britain and Spain concluded their conventions at Versailles, the American provisional articles, shaped into a definitive treaty, were signed by Hartley for Great Britain; by Adams, Franklin, and Jay for the United States of America. The coalition ministry did not last long enough to exchange ratifications. To save the enormous expense of maintaining the British army in New York, Fox hastened its departure; but while "the speedy and complete evacuation of all the territories of the United States " + was authoritatively promised to the American commissioners at Paris in the name of the king, Lord North, acting on the petition of merchants interested in the Canada trade,# withheld orders for the evacuation of the western and north-western interior posts, although by the treaty they were as much an integral part of the United States as Albany or Boston; and this policy, like that relating to commerce, was continued by the ministry that succeeded him. We may not turn away from England without relating that Pitt for the second time proposed in the house of commons, though in vain, a change in the representation, by introducing one hundred new members from the counties and from the metropolis. Universal suffrage he condemned, and the privilege of the owners of rotten boroughs to name members of parliament had for him the sanctity of private property, to * Fox to duke of Manchester, 9 August 1783. Same to same, 4 August 1783. MS. Same to Hartley 4 August 1783. MS. Hartley to Fox, 31 July 1783. MS. Fox to Hartley, 10 June 1783. MS. Compare Fox to Hartley, 15 May 1783. MS. # Regulations proposed by the merchants interested in the trade to the province of Quebec, 1783. MS. be taken away only after compensation. "Mankind," said Fox, "are made for themselves, not for others. The best government is that in which the people have the greatest share. The present motion will not go far enough; but, as it is an amendment, I give it my hearty support." An early and a most beneficent result of the American revolution was a reform of the British colonial system. Taxation of colonies by the parliament of Great Britain, treatment of them as worthless except as drudges for the enrichment of the ruling kingdom, plans of governing them on the maxims of a Hillsborough or a Thurlow,* came to an end. It grew to be the rule to give them content by the establishment of liberal constitutions. *Sheffield's Commerce of the American States, 175-180. |