New York Packet, "leads us into a fatal error the moment we begin to talk of the interests of America. The fact is, by the interests of America we mean only the interests of that State to which property or accident has attached us." "Of the affairs of Georgia,” Madison confessed in 1786, “I know as little as those of Kamskatska."

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On all sides intelligent men agreed that the return of prosperity depended upon the opening-up of foreign trade. Their immediate concern was the recovery of old markets. When John Adams went to London in 1785 as the first representative of the United States, he bent all his energies to the task of securing a commercial treaty which would provide for unrestricted intercourse between the countries. It was an impossible task. At every turn he encountered the hostility of the mercantile classes, of whom Lord Sheffield was the most conspicuous representative."What have you to give us in exchange for this and that?" "What have you to give us as reciprocity for the benefit of going to our islands?" “What assurance can you give that the States will agree to a treaty?" These were the embarrassing questions which Adams had to encounter. Baffled by the cool indifference of the English Ministry, Adams wrote home in despair that there was not the slightest prospect of relief for American commerce unless the States would confer the power of passing navigation laws upon Congress or themselves pass retaliatory acts against Great Britain.

Congress had, indeed, already urged upon the States the necessity of yielding the power to enact

navigation laws; but they had replied with such deliberation and with so many conditions that Congress was as powerless as ever. Meantime, each State struck blindly at the common enemy with little or no regard for its neighbors. "The States are every day giving proofs," wrote Madison, "that separate regulations are more likely to set them by the ears than to attain the common object." When the other New England States closed their ports to British shipping, Connecticut hastened to profit at their expense by throwing her ports wide open. New Jersey, with New York on one side and Pennsylvania on the other, was likened to a cask tapped at both ends. To find a historical parallel to the annals of this period, one must go back to the bickerings and jealousies of the states of ancient Greece.

In this dark picture, however, there are cheering rays of light. One by one the States were redeeming their promises and ceding their western lands. It seemed as though the Confederation, hitherto a disembodied spirit, was about to tenant a body. By the year 1786 the United States were in joint possession of the greater part of the vast region be tween the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes - a domain of imperial dimensions. In anticipation of these cessions, Congress took under consideration an ordinance reported by a committee of which Thomas Jefferson was chairman. This ordinance contemplated the division of the land north of the thirty-first parallel into fourteen or sixteen States. The settlers in these rectangular areas were not to form state governments at once, but for their

temporary government were to borrow such constitutions as they thought best from the older States. When a State had twenty thousand inhabitants, it might frame a permanent constitution and send a delegate to Congress. Admission to the Union was to be granted only

when a State had as many free inhabitants as "the least numerous of the thirteen original States." Two features of Jefferson's report do not appear in the Ordinance of 1784; the fantastic names which Jefferson had selected and the fifth of the fundamental conditions which were to be a charter of

compact between the old States and the new. It is perhaps no misfortune that the names Assenisipia, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, do not appear on the map; the article prohibiting slavery after the year 1800 might well have been retained.

More important than the Ordinance of 1784, which indeed is interesting chiefly because it was the forerunner of the final ordinance for the Northwest Territory, is that adopted by Congress in the follow

ing year. The so-called Land Ordinance of 1785 pro vided in general for the survey of a series of townships six miles square in the region immediately west of Pennsylvania, and for the further division of each township into thirty-six lots, or, as they were later styled, "sections," one mile square. After satisfying the claims of the soldiers of the Continental Army, Congress proposed to distribute these lands among the States, to be sold at auction for a minimum price of one dollar an acre, reserving certain sections in each township and one third of the mineral ore which might be found. The sixteenth section in each township was to be set aside for the support of education. Each purchaser was to receive with his deed a definite description of his holding. Subsequent amendments to the Land Ordinance made the terms of purchase somewhat easier. Instead of making an out-and-out purchase, prospective settlers might pay one third in cash and receive a credit of three months for the balance of the purchase price. Yet even with these inducements only seventythree thousand acres had been sold to individuals down to 1788. The hazards of western settlement were still too great.

Disappointed in the sales under the Land Ordinance, Congress was persuaded to consider the alternative course of selling large tracts to companies. The collapse of national credit left the public domain almost the only available source of revenue. Early in 1787 the Ohio Company offered to purchase a tract of land between the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers. The promoters of this company had

been interested in an earlier project of army officers for the founding of a military colony beyond the Ohio. Organized at Boston in March, 1786, with a nominal capital of one million dollars, it had within a year raised one fourth of that amount and sent first General Samuel Parsons and then the Reverend Manasseh Cutler to secure the desired grant from Congress. The labors of this astute divine at the seat of government form an interesting chapter in the evolution of American legislative methods. By devices well known to the modern lobbyist he not only secured the grant of land, but also took a hand in the shaping of a new ordinance for the Northwest Territory. In order to secure the grant to his associates, he had to resort to log-rolling and agree to procure for a group of land speculators an option to lands on the Scioto River. The grant to the Ohio Company contained a million and a half acres; that to the Scioto Company, five million acres. But while the one paid down half a million dollars, the other made no payment, expecting to dispose of their rights" before the first payment was due. In the following year a third grant of a million acres on the Great and Little Miami Rivers in Ohio was made to John Cleve Symmes.

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From these sales Congress expected to realize over three and a half million dollars in public securities and at the same time to satisfy military bounty warrants amounting to about eight hundred thousand acres. The actual amount realized was less than six hundred thousand dollars. The Scioto Company succeeded in disposing of rights to about three million