e other ten
were, as might have been expected, a jumble of incongruities. North
Carolina granted all the power that was asked, but stipulated that when
all the states should have done likewise their acts should be summed up
in a new article of confederation. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland had fixed the date at which the grant was to take effect, while
Rhode Island provided that it should not expire until after the lapse of
twenty-five years. The grant by New Hampshire allowed the power to be
used only in one specified way,--by restricting the duties imposable by
the several states. The grants of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey,
and Virginia were not to take effect until all the others should go into
operation. The only thing which Congress could do with these acts was to
refer them back to the several legislatures, with a polite request to
try to reduce them to something like uniformity.

[Sidenote: Commercial war between different states.]

Meanwhile, the different states, with their different tariff and tonnage
acts, began to make commercial war upon one another. No sooner had the
other three New England states virtually closed their ports to British
shipping than Connecticut threw hers wide open, an act which she
followed up by laying duties upon imports from Massachusetts.
Pennsylvania discriminated against Delaware, and New Jersey, pillaged at
once by both her greater neighbours, was compared to a cask tapped at
both ends. The conduct of New York became especially selfish and
blameworthy. That rapid growth which was so soon to carry the city and
the state to a position of primacy in the Union had already begun. After
the departure of the British the revival of business went on with leaps
and bounds. The feeling of local patriotism waxed strong, and in no one
was it more completely manifested than in George Clinton, the
Revolutionary general, whom the people elected governor for nine
successive terms. From a humble origin, by dint of shrewdness and
untiring push, Clinton had come to be for the moment the most powerful
man in the state of New York. He had come to look upon the state almost
as if it were his own private manor, and his life was devoted to
furthering its interests as he understood them. It was his first article
of faith that New York must be the greatest state in the Union. But his
conceptions of statesmanship were extremely narrow. In his mind, the
welfare of New York meant the pulling do