After the war was
over, and the people were left with independence and freedom, with a
powerful ally in Europe, with elements of unrivalled resource, but with
a heavy load of debt, with disorganized social and political relations,
with crippled commerce, and without the powerful uniting pressure from
outside, this system of confederation began to develop its evils and its
insufficiency. To complete the triumph begun by the desolating struggle
through which we had just passed, and, by building up a system under
whose operation the nation's wealth could pay the nation's debt, and the
nation's power protect the nation's honor and interest, to assert at
once the claim and the right to respect, was the necessity of the time.
To answer this necessity was a very different thing from conducting the
war. Commerce was now to take the place of naval conflict; mutual
intercourse in the interest of trade was to replace the performance of
those duties which the common defence had imposed. The life of the
people was now to be saved, not by armed struggles in its defence, but
by nurturing its resources, opening its various channels, and freeing it
for the performance of its healthful and renewing functions.
For this purpose, a system which could not make treaties of commerce
without leaving it in the power of thirteen States to break them by
retaliation, which could not prevent one or all of these States from
utterly prohibiting the import or export of such commodities as they
chose, and which left the people powerless to induce or compel
advantages from foreign commerce, while it was even more helpless in
regard to domestic commerce--for this purpose such a system was
absolutely useless.
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