eally benefited English commerce by preying on the shipping of
weaker nations. "It is not probable that the American States will have
a very free trade in the Mediterranean," said he. "It will not be to the
interest of any of the great maritime Powers to protect them from the
Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage
the Americans to be carriers. That the Barbary States are advantageous
to maritime Powers is certain."

Denied the normal ebb and flow of trade and commerce and with the
imports from England far exceeding the value of the merchandise exported
thence, the United States, already impoverished, was drained of its
money, and a currency of dollars, guineas, joes, and moidores grew
scarcer day by day. There was no help in a government which consisted of
States united only in name. Congress comprised a handful of respectable
gentlemen who had little power and less responsibility, quarreling among
themselves for lack of better employment. Retaliation against England by
means of legislation was utterly impossible. Each State looked after
its commerce in its own peculiar fashion and the devil might take
the hindmost. Their rivalries and jealousies were like those of petty
kingdoms. If one State should close her ports is to English ships, the
others would welcome them in order to divert the trade, with no feeling
of national pride or federal cooperation.

The Articles of Confederation had empowered Congress to make treaties of
commerce, but only such as did not restrain the legislative power of
any State from laying imposts and regulating exports and imports. If a
foreign power imposed heavy duties upon American shipping, it was for
the individual States and not for Congress to say whether the vessels of
the offending nation should be allowed free entrance to the ports of the
United States: It was folly to suppose, ran the common opinion, that
if South Carolina should bar her ports to Spain because rice and indigo
were excluded from the Spanish colonies, New Hampshire, which furnished
masts and lumber for the Spanish Navy, ought to do the same. The idea of
turning the whole matter over to Congress was considered preposterous by
many intelligent Americans.

In these thirteen States were nearly three and a quarter million people
hemmed in a long and narrow strip between the sea and an unexplored
wilderness in which the Indians were an ever present peril. The Southern
States, including Maryla