prohibitions that marked the European tariffs of the time, as well as many features of the old colonial system. They were designed to legalize commerce rather than to encourage it.” ¹ Still, for a year or more after the war the demand for American products was great enough to satisfy almost everybody. But in 1784 France and Spain closed their colonial ports and thus excluded the shipping of the United States. This proved to be so disastrous for their colonies that the French Government soon was forced to relax its restrictions. The British also made some concessions, and where their orders were not modified they were evaded. And so, in the course of a few years, the West India trade recovered.

More astonishing to the men of that time than it is to us was the fact that American foreign trade fell under British commercial control again. Whether it was that British merchants were accustomed to American ways of doing things and knew American business conditions; whether other countries found the commerce not as profitable as they had expected, as certainly was the case with France; whether “American merchants and sea captains found themselves under disadvantages due to the absence of treaty protection which they had enjoyed as English subjects”; ² or whether it was the necessity of trading on British capital—whatever the cause may have been—within a comparatively few years a large part of American trade was in British hands as it had been before the Revolution. American trade with Europe was carried on through English merchants very much as the Navigation Acts had prescribed.

From the very first settlement of the American continent the colonists had exhibited one of the earliest and most lasting characteristics of the American people—adaptability. The Americans now proceeded to manifest that trait anew, not only by adjusting themselves to renewed commercial dependence upon Great Britain, but by seeking new avenues of trade. A striking illustration of this is to be found in the development of trade with the Far East. Captain Cook’s voyage around the world (1768-1771), an account of which was first published in London in 1773, attracted a great deal of attention in America; an edition of the New Voyage was issued in New York in 1774. No sooner was the Revolution over than there began that romantic trade with China and the northwest coast of America, which made the fortunes of some families of Salem and Boston and Philadelphia. This commerce added to the prosperity of the country, but above all it stimulated the imagination of Americans. In the same way another outlet was found in trade with Russia by way of the Baltic.

The foreign trade of the United States after the Revolution thus passed through certain well-marked phases. First there was a short period of prosperity, owing to an unusual demand for American products; this was followed by a longer period of depression; and then came a gradual recovery through acceptance of the new conditions and adjustment to them.

A similar cycle may be traced in the domestic or internal trade. In early days intercolonial commerce had been carried on mostly by water, and when war interfered commerce almost ceased for want of roads. The loss of ocean highways, however, stimulated road building and led to what might be regarded as the first “good-roads movement” of the new nation, except that to our eyes it would be a misuse of the word to call any of those roads good. But anything which would improve the means of transportation took on a patriotic tinge, and the building of roads and the cutting of canals were agitated until turnpike and canal companies became a favorite form of investment; and in a few years the interstate land trade had grown to considerable importance. But in the meantime, water transportation was the main reliance, and with the end of the war the coastwise trade had been promptly resumed. For a time it prospered; but the States, affected by the general economic conditions and by jealousy, tried to interfere with and divert the trade of others to their own advantage. This was done by imposing fees and charges and duties, not merely upon goods and vessels from abroad but upon those of their fellow States. James Madison described the situation in the words so often quoted: “Some of the States, … having no convenient ports for foreign commerce, were subject to be taxed by their neighbors, thro whose ports, their commerce was carryed on. New Jersey, placed between Phila. & N. York, was likened to a Cask tapped at both ends: and N. Carolina between Virga. & S. Carolina to a patient bleeding at both Arms.” ¹

The business depression which very naturally followed the short revival of trade was so serious in its financial consequences that it has even been referred to as the “Panic of 1785.” The United States afforded a good market for imported articles in 1788 and 1784, all the better because of the supply of gold and silver which had been sent into the country by England and France to maintain their armies and fleets and which had remained in the United States. But this influx of imported goods was one of the chief factors in causing the depression of 1785, as it brought ruin to many of those domestic industries which had sprung up in the days of non-intercourse or which had been stimulated by the artificial protection of the war.

To make matters worse, the currency was in a confused condition. “In 1784 the entire coin of the land, except coppers, was the product of foreign mints. English guineas, crowns, shillings and pence were still paid over the counters of shops and taverns, and with them were mingled many French and Spanish and some German coins.… The value of the gold pieces expressed in dollars was pretty much the same the country over. But the dollar and the silver pieces regarded as fractions of a dollar had no less than five different values.” ¹ The importation of foreign goods was fast draining the hard money out of the country. In an effort to relieve the situation but with the result of making it much worse, several of the States began to issue paper money; and this was in addition to the enormous quantities of paper which had been printed during the Revolution and which was now worth but a small fraction of its face value.