Note 353 — Chapter VI

One of the necessary and immediate effects of the Revolution of course was, the loss of the exclusive commercial advantages which this country had enjoyed with Great Britain and her dependencies; and the prohibitory acts and impositions, which fell with their full weight on the American trade, after the peace, were particularly disastrous to the trade of Massachusetts. The whale fishery, a business of great importance, had brought into the Province, before the war, 172,000 guineas per annum, giving employment to American seamen, and not requiring the use of any foreign materials, except a small quantity of cordage. A duty was now laid on whale oil in England of £18 per tun. In addition to the loss thus sustained, the exportation of lumber and provisions in American bottoms to the West Indies was entirely prohibited. Another great inconvenience, which came in fact to be intolerable, was the vast influx of British goods, consigned to English factors for sale, depriving the native merchants, manufacturers, and artisans of the market. At the same time, the revenue of the State, derived from impost and excise duties and a tax on auctions of one per cent., fell short of the annual interest on the private debt of the State, 30,000 pounds (currency) per annum, and a tax of 20,000 pounds (currency) was computed to be necessary to cancel the debt, principal and interest, in fifteen years, and pay the ordinary charges of the government. Besides this, the State's proportion of the federal debt was to be provided for. It was in this state of things that two remarkable popular meetings were held in Boston, in the spring of 1785, to act upon the subject of trade and navigation, and to call the attention of Congress to the necessity for a national regulation of commerce. The first was a meeting of the merchants and tradesmen, convened at Faneuil Hall on the 18th of April. They appointed a committee to draft a petition to Congress, representing the embarrassments under which the trade was laboring, and took measures to cause the legislature to call the attention of the delegation in Congress to the importance of immediate action upon the subject. They also established a committee of correspondence with the merchants in the other seaports of the United States, to induce a similar action; and they entered into a pledge not to purchase any goods of the British merchants and factors residing in Boston, who had made very heavy importations, which tended to drain the specie of the State. The other meeting was an assembly of the artisans and mechanics, held at the Green Dragon Tavern, on the 28th of April, at which similar resolutions were adopted. It is quite apparent, from these proceedings, that all branches of industry were threatened with ruin; and in the efforts to counteract the effects of the great influx of foreign commodities, we trace the first movements of a popular nature towards a national control over commerce.