Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/366

 became, in 1783, the now great transatlantic republic, known as the United States of America.

For some time after their independence had been acknowledged, the people of the infant republic were slow in recovering from the extraordinary efforts they had made to secure their position as a nation. There were domestic as well as foreign obstacles to overcome. Each of the thirteen States at first contended for its own immediate interests. Some of them declared for a system of free-trade; others were in favour of protection. When a five per cent. ad valorem duty on foreign produce was proposed by Congress, with a view to pay off the debt of the federation, the opposition of one State alone, that of Rhode Island, was sufficient to defeat the project. And when the State of Pennsylvania levied a duty on foreign produce, New Jersey, equally washed by the waters of the Delaware river, admitted the same articles brought by foreign merchant vessels free of duty, the result being that goods could be easily smuggled into one State from the other. Nor did the troubles of the new States end here.

No sooner had their independence been acknowledged than there arose, as we have seen, in Great Britain a controversy respecting the extent of the commercial rights which it would be advisable to concede to the republic; the main point in contention being whether the vessels of the United States should be excluded from her West Indian settlements, as the vessels of all other nations were by the Navigation Act, and from a commerce at that time constituting the most valuable branch of the whole British trade. As this view of the question