Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/145

Rh provision for the preservation and government of the Union. Among the ripening incidents was the insurrection of Shays, in Massachusetts, against her government, which was with difficulty suppressed, notwithstanding the influence on the insurgents of an apprehended interposition of the federal troops.

At the date of the Convention, the aspect and retrospect of the political condition of the United States could not but fill the public mind with a gloom which was relieved only by a hope that so select a body would devise an adequate remedy for the existing and prospective evils so impressively demanding it.

It was seen that the public debt, rendered so sacred by the cause in which it had been incurred, remained without any provision for its payment. The reiterated and elaborate efforts of Congress, to procure from the states a more adequate power to raise the means of payment, had failed. The effect of the ordinary requisitions of Congress had only displayed the inefficiency of the authority making them, none of the states having duly complied with them, some having failed altogether, or nearly so, while in one instance, that of New Jersey, a compliance was expressly refused; nor was more yielded to the expostulations of members of Congress, deputed to her legislature, than a mere repeal of the law, without a compliance. The want of authority in Congress to regulate commerce had produced in foreign nations, particularly Great Britain, a monopolizing policy, injurious to the trade of the United States, and destructive to their navigation; the imbecility and anticipated dissolution of the Confederacy extinguishing all apprehensions of a countervailing policy on the part of the United States. The same want of a general power over commerce led to an exercise of the power, separately, by the states, which not only proved abortive, but engendered rival, conflicting, and angry regulations. Besides the vain attempts to supply their respective treasuries by imposts, which turned their commerce into the neighboring ports, and to coerce a relaxation of the British monopoly of the West India navigation, which was attempted by Virginia, the states having ports for foreign commerce taxed and irritated the adjoining states trading through them—as New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Some of the states, as Connecticut, taxed imports from others, as from Massachusetts, which complained in a letter to the executive of Virginia, and doubtless to those of other states. In sundry instances, as of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the navigation laws treated the citizens of other states as aliens. In certain cases, the authority of the Confederacy was disregarded—as in violation, not only of the treaty of peace, but of treaties with France and Holland; which were complained of to Congress. In other cases, the federal authority was violated by treaties and wars with Indians, as by Georgia; by troops raised and kept up without the consent of Congress,