342

COINAGE SYSTEM; fend their lives and liberties, to acquire property and to seek and obtain safety and happiness, which clause the supreme court decided was a complete abolition of slavery.*

There was no money standard for all the States; no national currency based upon a universally recognized unit. The State pound and the Spanish milled dollar were the two units of value in the various States, but the standards of coinage were different in each. In Georgia the pound contained 1,547 grains of silver; in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Virginia it contained 1,289; in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland 1,03114; and in New York and North Carolina 96634.† When subdivided into shillings and pence, the value of a penny was therefore very unequal in the different States. The Spanish milled dollar was the chief silver coin in general circulation and was divided into a half, quarter, eighth or sixteenth, each represented by a silver coin, containing whatever number of shillings or pence the custom or standard of the country into which it was taken demanded. In New England and Virginia the dollar was supposed to equal 6s, or 72d; 7s and 6d in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland; 8s or 96d in New

*Fiske, Critical Period, pp. 71-75.

†See Jefferson's Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States, in Ford's ed. of Jefferson's Writings, vol. iii., p. 449.

PENAL AFFAIRS.

York and North Carolina; and 4s and 8d in Georgia and South Carolina.* Penal affairs were in a deplorable condition, the laws being especially harsh. Perhaps the worst prison in the country was the underground Newgate prison, an old worked-out copper mine near Granby, Connecticut, which was absolutely dark and reeking with filth.† At Northampton, Worcester, and other places in Massachusetts the jails were scarcely better, the cells being low and narrow, without light and almost without air. Though the cells in Philadelphia jails were themselves much larger, they were so crowded as to make the conditions no better; criminals of both sexes were huddled together in the same cells, without beds, oftentimes without clothing, unwashed, unshaved and generally half dead with disease. The modes of punishment consisted of the pillory, stocks, chains, whipping-post, branding, hanging by the thumbs, etc., while in Massachusetts ten crimes were punishable by death.‡

The problems before the people were many and vexatious, for the end of the war did not end the trials

of the federated colonies. In addition to clearing away the wreckage resulting from several years of war, the people had to find a suitable political organization and begin seri

McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 22-23. R. H. Phelps, A History of the Newgate Prison (1844).

‡ McMaster, United States, vol. i., pp. 98–102.

344

selves were the government, the possessors of the final political authority, that "government " was merely the servant of the supreme powerthe people, and that to limit or restrain government or to make it weak and ineffective was to limit the people, to weaken national life and to create an anarchistic and individualistic society. There were many who believed in unenlightened individualism, caring nothing for others so long as they themselves were left alone; they could not comprehend that government was an absolutely

66

necessary evil," if the country was not to retrogade into a state of feudalism or worse. While it is true that State governments had been formed, save for a few changes in methods, the local authority was not so much different from the old colonial administrations. But the people were content to stop with forming these State constitutions and could see no reason to create a still higher power over all the States. which could levy taxes and compel obedience - the very conditions against which they had so long fought.

The geographical position of the country both aided and retarded its political development. Its very isolation from the rest of the universe compelled the thought of unity

among its inhabitants and a common destiny. But on the other hand the colonies themselves were not continental, either in social customs, commercial and industrial activities, or political institutions. Owing to the lack of means of communication,— railroads, telegraphs, highways — and means of spreading news, the colonies were very remote from each other. The people of Georgia knew little of New Englanders, and the latter cared less for the former. Mails were very infrequent and oftentimes the people of Europe were acquainted with events in Massachusetts before the people of Georgia learned of them. Such towns as were off the main routes of travel were more isolated than the most secluded towns in the heart of the Rockies at the present time.* But to offset this, the States of the confederation were similar in structure and the people of all sections alike were saturated with the fundamental principles of English liberty and lawthey all had the same political inheritance and consequently thought more or less alike. Moreover, it was coming to be seen that a properly established union was a "grinding necessity."

* McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution, pp. 44–46.

345

-

The subject of foreign commerce engaged the attention of Congress soon after the ratification of the definitive treaty of peace. The war had reduced the foreign trade of the country to almost nothing; trade, commerce, and the fisheries were gone. Foreign ports had been closed to American shipping so long that practically no demand existed for American goods. Yet the consumption of English goods was as large as ever, the imports from England to America amounting to £3,700,000 sterling in 1784, while the exports amounted to only £750,000.*

That the country was destitute and poverty stricken because of lack of foreign trade was far from the fact; the refusal to comply with the requisitions of Congress did not indicate that there was no money in the country, but principally that the people in the States were exceedingly jealous of the power of Continental Congress. That general commercial and

-

The struggle over paper money.

industrial conditions would be as flourishing as prior to the war could not be expected. The commerce of New England had necessarily become badly deranged, but even this had its compensations, for numbers of those who were then out of work went into the interior, where they opened up new industries, while still others, particularly those who followed the sea for subsistence, entered privateering enterprises, in which there was at that time a lucrative living. Numbers of the merchants, finding their foreign trade cut off and ruined, equipped their ships as privateers and made fortunes.* But after the war even this source of income was cut off and New England trade became practically stagnant. In addition the whale fisheries were ruined and the cod fisheries in bad condition, and furthermore in 1784 Parliament passed an act (25 Geo. III., c. i.), prohibiting trade with Newfoundland. Prior to the war the

Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii., pp. 776–778.

346

*

New Englanders had sent large quantities of oil to London, had sold their ships to pay the debts of their merchants, and had carried on an extensive and lucrative trade with the West Indies. But now the British government, by orders in council issued at various times, had practically cut off the trade with the West Indies and the importation of oil was prohibited. In the South, plantation life had been considerably disturbed by the carrying away of thousands of slaves by the British; the ravages of war had brought great distress upon the people, and for the first few years after the war the exports of products from Southern ports diminished in amount and value.+ Nevertheless, the unemployed found other duties to perform, though of course the readjustment took some time. The privateersmen returned to their foreign trade and soon a profitable business sprang up. In 1795, 60 American vessels entered the port of Lisbon from America and foreign ports, whereas only 77 European vessels arrived from the same ports, and the volume of trade with the continental countries began to be considerable.

When the American commissioners were at Paris in 1783 negotiating the peace treaty, they had been unable to agree with the British representative regarding a commercial arrangement between the two countries. As

* McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution, pp. 73-74.

See Drayton, View of South Carolina, p. 167.

a result, each nation was left to make its own regulations. In March, 1783, William Pitt, then chancellor of the exchequer, introduced in Commons a bill for the temporary regulation of commerce between Great Britain and the United States, which was founded upon very liberal principles.* After stating the new relations between the two countries, this bill declared:

"And, whereas, it is highly expedient, that the intercourse between Great Britain and the said United States should be established on the most enlarged principles of reciprocal benefit to both countries, but from the distance between Great Britain and America, it must be a considerable time before any convention or treaty for establishing and regulating the trade and intercourse between Great Britain and the said United States of America, upon a permanent foundation, can, be concluded:

-

"Now for the purpose of making a temporary regulation of the commerce and intercourse between Great Britain and the said United States of America, and in order to evince the disposition of Great Britain, to be on terms of the most

perfect amity with the said United States of America, and in confidence of a like friendly disposition on the part of the United States towards Great Britain, be it further enacted that from and after the ....... the ships and vessels of the subjects and citizens of the said United States of America, with the merchandize and goods on board the same, shall be admitted into all the ports of Great Britain, in the same manner as the ships and vessels of the subjects of other independent sovereign states; but the merchandize and goods on board such ships or vessels of the subjects or citizens of the said United States, being of the growth, produce or manufacture of the said United States, shall be liable to the same duties and charges only, as the same merchandizes and goods would be subject to, if they were the property of British subjects, and imported in British built ships or vessels, navigated by British natural born subjects.

"And be it further enacted, that during the time aforesaid, the ships and vessels of the subjects and citizens of the said United States shall