eign trade. Their immediate concern
was the recovery of old markets. When John Adams went to London in 1785
as the first representative of the United States, he bent all his
energies to the task of securing a commercial treaty which would provide
for unrestricted intercourse between the countries. It was an impossible
task. At every turn he encountered the hostility of the mercantile
classes, of whom Lord Sheffield was the most conspicuous representative.
"What have you to give us in exchange for this and that?" "What have you
to give us as reciprocity for the benefit of going to our islands?"
"What assurance can you give that the States will agree to a treaty?"
These were the embarrassing questions which Adams had to encounter.
Baffled by the cool indifference of the English Ministry, Adams wrote
home in despair that there was not the slightest prospect of relief for
American commerce unless the States would confer the power of passing
navigation laws upon Congress or themselves pass retaliatory acts
against Great Britain.

Congress had, indeed, already urged upon the States the necessity of
yielding the power to enact navigation laws; but they had replied with
such deliberation and with so many conditions that Congress was as
powerless as ever. Meantime, each State struck blindly at the common
enemy with little or no regard for its neighbors. "The States are every
day giving proofs," wrote Madison, "that separate regulations are more
likely to set them by the ears than to attain the common object." When
the other New England States closed their ports to British shipping,
Connecticut hastened to profit at their expense by throwing her ports
wide open. New Jersey, with New York on one side and Pennsylvania on the
other, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends. To find a historical
parallel to the annals of this period, one must go back to the
bickerings and jealousies of the states of ancient Greece.

In this dark picture, however, there are cheering rays of light. One by
one the States were redeeming their promises and ceding their western
lands. It seemed as though the Confederation, hitherto a disembodied
spirit, was about to tenant a body. By the year 1786 the United States
were in joint possession of the greater part of the vast region between
the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes--a domain of imperial
dimensions. In anticipation of these cessions, Congress took under
consideration an ordinance reported