on had come,
accented the need of a stronger central government. To this end
Clinton and Hamilton seemed for several years to be working in
harmony. In 1780 Clinton had presented to the Legislature the "defect
of power" in the Confederation, and, in 1781, John Sloss Hobart and
Egbert Benson, representing New York at a convention in Hartford,
urged the recommendation empowering Congress to apportion taxes among
the States in the ratio of their total population. The next year,
Hamilton, although not a member of the Legislature, persuaded it to
adopt resolutions written by him, declaring that the powers of the
central government should be extended, and that it should be
authorised to provide revenue for itself. To this end "it would be
advisable," continued the resolutions, "to propose to Congress to
recommend, and to each State to adopt, the measure of assembling a
general convention of the States, specially authorised to revise and
amend the Constitution." To Washington's farewell letter, appealing
for a stronger central government, Governor Clinton sent a cordial
response, and in transmitting the address to the Legislature in 1784,
he recommended attention "to every measure which has a tendency to
cement the Union, and to give to the national councils that energy
which may be necessary for the general welfare."[26]

[Footnote 26: _Hamilton's Works_ (Lodge), Vol. 1, p. 277.]

Nevertheless, Clinton was not always candid. His official
communications read like the utterances of a friend; but his
influence, as disclosed in the acts of 1783 and 1786, reserving to the
State the sole power of levying and collecting duties, clearly
indicate that while he loved his country in a matter-of-fact sort of
way, it meant a country divided, a country of thirteen States each
berating the other, a country of trade barriers and commercial
resentments, a country of more importance to New York and to Clinton
than to other Commonwealths which had made equal sacrifices.

Thus matters drifted until New York and other middle Atlantic States
discovered that it was impossible under the impotent Articles of
Confederation to regulate commerce in waters bordered by two or more
States. Even when New York and New Jersey could agree, Pennsylvania,
on the other side of New Jersey, was likely to withhold its consent.
Friction of a similar character existed between Maryland and Virginia,
North Carolina and Virginia, and Maryland and Pennsylvania. This
c