CH. IV.]
OF THE CONFEDERATION.
239
refused to comply with it; and after a most animated debate in her legislature, she remained inflexible, and the fate of the measure was sealed forever by her solitary negative.[1]
§ 259. Independent, however, of this inability to lay taxes, or collect revenue, the want of any power in congress to regulate foreign or domestic commerce was deemed a leading defect in the confederation. This evil was felt in a comparatively slight degree during the war. But when the return of peace restored the country to its ordinary commercial relations, the want of some uniform system to regulate them was early perceived; and the calamities, which followed our shipping and navigation, our domestic, as well as our foreign trade, convinced the reflecting, that ruin impended upon these and other vital interests, unless a national remedy could be devised. We accordingly find the public papers of that period crowded with complaints on this subject. It was, indeed, idle and visionary to suppose, that while thirteen independent states possessed the exclusive power of regulating commerce, there could be found any uniformity of system, or any harmony and co-operation for the general welfare. Measures of a commercial nature, which were adopted in one state from a sense of its own interests, would be often countervailed or rejected by other states from similar motives.- ↑ 2 Pitk. Hist. 184. 222; 5 Marsh. Life of Washington, 62, 53, 124; 1 Tuck. Black. App. 158.—The speech of Col. Hamilton, the in legislature of New-York, in February, 1787, contains a very powerful argument in favour of the impost; and a statement of the extent, to which each of the states had complied with, or refused the requisitions of congress. During the past five years, he says, New-Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had paid nothing; Connecticut and ware, about one third; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland, about one half; Virginia, three fifths; Pennsylvania, near the whole; and New-York, more than her quota. 1 Amer. Museum, 445, 448.
