,
bringing goods, wares, or merchandise into the United States. The
essential weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of all, to be
remedied by uniform rules for the regulation of trade. Revenue must be
provided for the support of government, and that in a way which should
not be oppressive to the people. Commerce, Mr. Madison said, "ought to
be as free as the policy of nations will admit," but government must be
supported, and taxes the least burdensome and most easily collected are
those derived from duties on imports. He agreed, however, as he said on
the second day of the debate, with those who would so adjust the duties
on foreign goods as to protect the "infant manufactories" of the
country. With little interruption this subject was debated for the first
six weeks of the opening session of the First Congress. No other could
have been hit upon to test so thoroughly the strength of the new bond
of union. It was to brush aside all those trade regulations in the
several States which each had hitherto thought essential to its
prosperity. Every interest in the country was to be considered, and
their different, sometimes opposing, claims to be reconciled.

New England was sure that, should the tax on molasses be too high, the
distilleries would be shut up, and a great New England industry
destroyed. Nor would the injury stop there. The fisheries, as well as
the distilleries, would be ruined. For three fifths of the fish put up
for the West Indies could find no market anywhere else; and a market
existed there only because molasses was taken in exchange. A prohibitory
duty on that article, or a duty that should seriously interfere with its
importation, would wellnigh destroy the fisheries. What then would
become of the nursery of American seamen? With no seamen there would be
no shipbuilding. What sadder picture than this of a New England without
rum, without codfish, without seamen, and without ships! One can easily
conceive that even in that restrained and dignified First Congress there
was no want of serious and alarmed expostulation, and even some
threatening talk from such men as the tranquil Goodhue, the thoughtful
and scholarly Ames, and the impulsive Gerry.

Then the South, for her part, was alarmed lest, among other things, too
high a tonnage duty should leave her tobacco, her rice and indigo,
rotting in the fields and warehouses for want of ships to take them to
market. She had no ships of her own and could