the right
to the Mississippi should be surrendered to Spain, if it were made the
condition of an alliance. In deference to her neighbors, Virginia
proposed that Mr. Jay should be reinstructed accordingly.

Mr. Madison was not in the least shaken in his conviction. With him, the
question was one of right rather than of expediency. But not many at
that time ventured to doubt that representatives must implicitly obey
the instructions of their constituents. He yielded; but not till he had
appealed to the Assembly to reconsider their decision. The scale was
turned; in deference to the wishes of the Southern States new orders
were sent to Mr. Jay. Mr. Madison, however, had not long to wait for his
justification. When the immediate danger, which had so alarmed the
South, had passed away, Virginia returned to her original position. New
instructions were again sent to her representatives, and Mr. Jay was
once more advised by Congress that on the Mississippi question his
government would yield nothing.

On another question, two years afterward, Mr. Madison refused to accept
a position of inconsistency in obedience to instructions which his State
attempted to force upon him. No one saw more clearly than he how
absolutely necessary to the preservation of the Confederacy was the
settlement of its financial affairs on some sound and just basis; and no
one labored more earnestly and more intelligently than he to bring about
such a settlement. Congress had proposed in 1781 a tax upon imports,
each State to appoint its own collectors, but the revenue to be paid
over to the federal government to meet the expenses of the war. Rhode
Island alone, at first, refused her assent to this scheme. An impost law
of five per cent. upon certain imports and a specific duty upon others
for twenty-five years were an essential part of the plan of 1783 to
provide a revenue to meet the interest on the public debt and for other
general purposes. That Rhode Island would continue obstinate on this
point was more than probable; and the only hope of moving her was that
she should be shamed or persuaded into compliance by the combined
influence of all the other States.

Mr. Madison was as bitter as he could ever be in his reflections upon
that State, whose course, he thought, showed a want of any sense of
honor or of patriotism. Virginia, he argued, should rebuke her by making
her own compliance with the law the more emphatic, as an example for all
the rest.