310 Power to regulate trade refused. [i 784-6- Congress, as was foreseen, could not retaliate ; the States, jealous of each other, would not impose restrictions; and in a few months the wharves of New York and Boston, Charleston and Savannah, were crowded with British vessels, and the native merchants half ruined by British factors who sold for cash shiploads of British goods. The merchants declared that ruin stared them in the face. The demand (they said) for tammies, callimancoes, durants, brocades, damasks, Irish linens, had never been so great ; yet from this lucrative trade they were excluded. If they loaded their vessels with rice, indigo, flour, whale-oil, lumber, pitch, tar, or tobacco, and entered the port of London or Liverpool, an enormous duty was laid on them because they were not Englishmen. This duty (they argued) was a clear loss. If they attempted to recover it in England by adding it to the price of the goods they imported, they were undersold by Englishmen who had brought in the same kind of goods free of duty. If they attempted to recover it in America by adding it to the price of the goods they brought home, they were again undersold by British factors who had no such duty to pay in America. If this went on, the trade and commerce of the United States would soon be in the hands of Englishmen. Of this danger Congress was fully aware, and early in 1784 appointed a Grand Committee to report what should be done. The Committee reported that, in their view, the anticipations of the merchants were correct. They therefore recommended that Congress should urge the State Legislatures to make over to it, for fifteen years, the management of commercial affairs, and give it power to forbid merchandise to enter American ports unless brought in ships owned or sailed by American citizens, or by the subjects of such Powers as should, from time to time, make treaties of commerce with the United States. As this power to regulate trade could only be given by amending the Articles of Con- federation, and the Articles could only be amended with the consent of each one of the thirteen States, it was anticipated that a considerable time would elapse before it could be obtained. So heedless were the States that eighteen months later only Maryland and New Hampshire had acted on the recommendation. This delay is to be ascribed partly to apathy, but partly also to the fact that the States were attempting to regulate trade for themselves. Early in 1785, while the legislature of New York was in session, the merchants of New York City addressed it in a long memorial, and solemnly recommended it to give Congress power over trade. The legislature, in response, imposed a double duty on goods imported in British vessels. A month later the Boston merchants met, addressed their own legislature, as well as Congress, appointed a committee to correspond with merchants in other States, and pledged themselves not to buy any goods from the British factors then in Boston. When the General Court of Massachusetts assembled, the Governor in his turn made
