Lord Sheffield's Pamphlet

The League were equally unfortunate in their attempts to establish commercial relations with other governments, especially with Great Britain. The British ministry in power when the treaty of peace was ratified were disposed to make liberal commercial arrangements with the Americans, and our commerce began to revive. William Pitt, son of the Earl of Chatham, and then, at the age of twenty-four years, Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed a plan by which the British West India Islands and other possessions of the crown, should be thrown open to American commerce. Such a measure would have secured a lasting peace between the two countries. But the unwisdom of British statesmen could not discern it. The shipping interest, then potential in Parliament, opposed it, and the wiser ministry did not survive the proposition a month. The new ministry, listening to the suggestions of bitter American Loyalists in England, assumed a haughty tone toward the Americans, treating them as vassals, and inaugurating a restrictive commercial policy which indicated that they regarded the States of the League as only alienated members of the British realm. Lord Sheffield, in a pamphlet that was widely circulated, declared his belief that utter ruin must soon overtake the League because of the anarchy into which their independence had thrown them. He saw the utter weakness of their form of government, and advised his countrymen to consider them of little account as a nation. "If the American States choose to send consuls," he said, "receive them and send a consul to each State. Each State will soon enter into all necessary regulations with the consul, and this is the whole that is necessary." In other words, the United States have no dignity above that of a fifth-rate power; and the States are still, in fact, only dis-membered fragments of the British empire.

Impelled by this unfriendly conduct of Great Britain, the Congress, in the spring of 1784, asked the several States to delegate powers to them for fifteen years, by which they might, by countervailing measures, compel the British to be more liberal. The appeal was in vain. The States growing more and more jealous of their own dignity, refused to vest any such powers in the Congress; nor would they make any permanent or uniform arrangement among themselves. Without public credit; their commerce at the mercy of every adventurer; without respect at home or abroad, the League exhibited the sad spectacle of the elements of a great nation paralyzed in the formative process. Then came a threatened open rupture with Great Britain on account of the inexecution of the Treaty of Peace, when John Adams was sent to England early in 1785, clothed with the full powers of plenipotentiary, to arrange all matters in dispute. But he could accomplish little. He was courteously received, as we have observed, but was coldly treated afterward. The representative of a weak government, he was compelled to bite his lip in silence; and he asked and obtained leave to return home.

Meanwhile matters were becoming infinitely worse in the United States. The League appeared to be on the verge of dissolution. The idea of forming two or three distinct confederacies took possession of the public mind. The people of Western North Carolina revolted and a new State called Frankland, formed by the insurgents, lasted several months. A portion of Southwestern Virginia sympathized in the movement. Insurrections against the authorities of Pennsylvania appeared in the Wyoming Valley. A convention at Portland discussed the propriety of making the Territory of Maine an independent State. An armed mob surrounded the New Hampshire Legislature and demanded a remission of taxes. In Massachusetts, Captain Daniel Shays led a formidable insurrection, which caused the calling out of several thousand militia under General Lincoln to suppress it. There was resistance to taxation everywhere. It was caused by the hard necessities of the people. Debt weighed down all classes; and the burden of the tax gatherer was often the "feather that would break the camel's back."