One duty alone remained to be performed, and he now pronounced the adjournment of the Convention without day." While Pendleton was speaking, we are told that the House was in tears. Members who had mixed in the fierce mêlée, and who had uttered the wildest imprecations on the Constitution, as they listened to his calm, monitory voice, could not restrain their emotions. Old men, who had heard his parting benediction twelve years before to the Convention which declared independence, and called to mind his manly presence and the clear silver tones of a voice now tremulous and faint from infirmity and age, bowed their heads between their hands and wept freely. But in the midst of weeping the deep blue eye of Pendleton was undimmed. When he concluded his speech he descended from the chair, and, taking his seat on one of the nearest benches, he bade adieu to the members individually, who crowded around him to press a parting salutation. The warmest opponents were seen to exchange parting regards with each other. For it was a peculiar and noble characteristic of our fathers, when the contest was decided, to forgive and forget personal collisions, and to unite heart and hand in the common cause. On the breaking up of the House many members ordered their horses, and were before sunset some miles on their way homeward; and before the close of another day all had disappeared; and there was no object to remind the citizen of Richmond, as at nightfall through deserted streets he sought his home, that the members of one of the most illustrious assemblies that ever met on the American continent had finished their deliberations, had discharged the high trust confided to them by their country, and had again mingled with the mass of the people.

APPENDIX.

As a specimen of the complaints about the state of trade in 1785, I annex, with some comments upon it, an extract from a letter of Mr. Madison, dated Orange C. H., July 7, 1785, and addressed to R. H. Lee, which may be seen in Mr. Rives' History of the Life and Times of Madison, Vol. II, 47, note:

"What makes the British monopoly the more mortifying is the abuse which they make of it. Not only the private planters, who have resumed the practice of shipping their own tobacco, but many of the merchants, particularly the natives of the country, who have no connections with Great Britain, have received accounts of sales this season which carry the most visible and shameful frauds in every article. In every point of view, indeed, the trade of the country is in a most deplorable condition.

"A comparison of current prices here with those in the Northern States, either at this time or at any time since the peace, will show that the loss direct on our produce, and indirect on our imports, is not less than fifty per cent. Till very lately the price of one staple has been down at 32s. and 33s. on James river, at 28s. on Rappahannock river tobacco. During the same period the former was selling in Philadelphia, and I suppose in other Northern ports, at 44s. of this currency, and the latter in proportion, though it cannot be denied that tobacco in the Northern ports is intrinsically worth less than it is here, being at the same distance from the ultimate market, and burthened with the freight from this to the other States. The price of merchandise here is, at least, as much above, as that of tobacco is below, the Northern standard."

The British monopoly spoken of in the letter was nothing more or less than that England, having more ships than any

other nation, sent more of them to Virginia than any other nation did. Had France, or Spain, or Holland, or any other country, been fortunate enough to own more ships than its neighbor, the same ground of complaint would have existed; or had all the foreign shipping that entered our ports been equally divided among foreign powers, the ground of complaint would have been the same. The ship-carpenters, and the merchants who owned home-built ships, were dissatisfied at the state of things, and called for relief. And supposing, for the sake of argument, it would have been expedient to burden foreign vessels with taxes, the Assembly of Virginia had full authority to administer the proposed relief, which was done at the session following the date of the letter by the passage of an act imposing a tax on British shipping. And if it be alleged that, if Virginia imposed a tax, Maryland would admit the vessel taxed duty-free, it is conclusive to say that Virginia, with the assent of Congress, which followed as a matter of course, could form any agreement she pleased with Maryland, and did take efficient measures for so doing at the session of 1785. Thus far all that is complained of by Mr. Madison could be accomplished by an ordinary Act of Assembly, and required no change in the organic law.

The next ground of complaint is, that the foreign commission merchants made fraudulent returns to the planter; a very bad thing indeed, and justified a change of agents; but surely such a change could be made without overturning the government of the Confederation. Indeed, the Philadelphians, as it appears from the last sentence of the letter, did find honest agents abroad, we may suppose, if it be true, as alleged, that they sold their imported articles so much lower than they could be sold on James river. What the Northern merchant could do under the existing Confederation, we could do as well.

The second paragraph, which relates to current prices of tobacco in Philadelphia and in the Virginia waters, will strike every man of business as representing an abnormal state of trade, which is frequently seen under every system of laws. The obvious explanation is, that Philadelphia was not a tobacco market, and that what little tobacco she had was mainly designed to make up the complement of assorted cargoes, and would naturally command under such circumstances a higher price than the article was sell

ing for several hundred miles off. If the Philadelphia market had been stable at the prices named in the letter, and if the Virginia planter lost fifty per cent. of his crop and of his return purchases by sending it to England, it is plain that the whole tobacco crop of Virginia would have been at the foot of Marketstreet wharf in that city in less than six weeks from the time when the intelligence reached James river; for vessels were abundant, according to the letter itself. The saving in time, in freight, and in foreign purchases, would have put the Northern market ahead of all the world. Such inequalities, then, could have been remedied by a little management and common sense alone, without any change in the Federal alliances of Virginia.

But the great value of this letter, which has been selected from the files of Mr. Madison to show the desperate condition of affairs under the government of the Confederation, and to justify that statesman in his policy of depriving his native State of the invaluable right of regulating her own trade, consists in affording an unconscious, but not the less remarkable, proof of the commercial prosperity of Virginia at the time in question. Let it be remembered that the treaty with Great Britain, that ended the war of the Revolution, was not signed at Paris till the 3d day of September, 1783, and was not ratified by Congress until the 14th day of January, 1784; and that this letter of Mr. Madison was written in July, 1785; and that, besides the large trade and commerce of Norfolk, which we know from other sources, it represents the planters shipping from their own estates their abundant agricultural products in the ships of a single nation which were so numerous as to monopolize the trade and fix what rates they pleased; and that all this trade and commerce was the growth of less than eighteen months, and we have before us, under all the circumstances of the case, a picture of prosperity almost without a parallel. And this picture is heightened by the purport of three petitions, which are given on the same pages which contain the above letter. These petitions come from Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk. That from Norfolk is in the following words: "That the prohibition laid by Great Britain on the trade to the West Indies, and the almost total monopoly of the other branches of trade by foreigners, has produced great distress and much injury to the trade of the Commonwealth; that the rapid de-` crease of American bottoms, the total stop to ship-building and