Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/138

112 being of vast extent, and of growing value, were the occasion of much discussion and heart-burning, and proved the most obstinate of the impediments to an earlier consummation of the plan of federal government. The state of Maryland, the last that acceded to it, held out, as already noticed, till the 1st of March, 1781, and then yielded only to the hope that, by giving a stable and authoritative character to the Confederation, a successful termination of the con- test might be accelerated. The dispute was happily compromised by successive surrenders of portions of the territory by the states having exclusive claims to it, and acceptances of them by Congress.

The other source of dissatisfaction was the peculiar situation of some of the states, which, having no convenient ports for foreign commerce, were subject to be taxed by their neighbors, through whose ports their commerce was carried on. New Jersey, placed between Philadelphia and New York, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends; and North Carolina, between Virginia and South Carolina, to a patient bleeding at both arms. The articles of Confederation provided no remedy for the complaint, which produced a strong protest on the part of New Jersey, and never ceased to be a source of dissatisfaction and discord, until the new constitution superseded the old.

But the radical infirmity of the "Articles of Confederation" was the dependence of Congress on the voluntary and simultaneous compliance with its requisitions by so many independent communities, each consulting more or less its particular interests and convenience, and distrusting the compliance of the others. Whilst the paper emissions of Congress continued to circulate, they were employed as a sinew of war, like gold and silver. When that ceased to be the case, and the fatal defect of the political system was felt in its alarming force, the war was merely kept alive, and brought to a successful conclusion, by such foreign aids and temporary expedients as could be applied—a hope prevailing with many, and a wish with all, that a state of peace, and the sources of prosperity opened by it, would give to the Confederacy, in practice, the efficiency which had been inferred from its theory.

The close of the war, however, brought no cure for the public embarrassments. The states, relieved from the pressure of foreign danger, and flushed with the enjoyment of independent and sovereign power, instead of a diminished disposition to part with it, persevered in omissions and in measures incompatible with their relations to the federal government, and with those among themselves.

Having served as a member of Congress through the period between March, 1780, and the arrival of peace, in 1783, I had become intimately acquainted with the public distresses and the causes of them. I had observed the successful opposition to every attempt to procure a remedy by new grants of power to Congress. I had found, moreover, that despair of success hung over the compromising principle of April, 1783, for the public necessities, which had been so