For some time after their independence had been acknowledged, the people of the infant republic were slow in recovering from the extraordinary efforts they had made to secure their position as a nation. There were domestic as well as foreign obstacles to overcome. Each of the thirteen States at first contended for its own immediate interests. Some of them declared for a system of free-trade; others were in favour of protection. When a five per cent. _ad valorem_ duty on foreign produce was proposed by Congress, with a view to pay off the debt of the federation, the opposition of one State alone, that of Rhode Island, was sufficient to defeat the project. And when the State of Pennsylvania levied a duty on foreign produce, New Jersey, equally washed by the waters of the Delaware river, admitted the same articles brought by foreign merchant vessels free of duty, the result being that goods could be easily smuggled into one State from the other. Nor did the troubles of the new States end here. [Sidenote: Commercial rights.] [Sidenote: Retaliatory measures.] No sooner had their independence been acknowledged than there arose, as we have seen, in Great Britain a controversy respecting the extent of the commercial rights which it would be advisable to concede to the republic; the main point in contention being whether the vessels of the United States should be excluded from her West Indian settlements, as the vessels of all other nations were by the Navigation Act, and from a commerce at that time constituting the most valuable branch of the whole British trade. As this view of the question prevailed, Congress, in 1784, recommended to the legislatures of the different States the adoption of a law prohibiting for fifteen years the importation and exportation of every species of merchandise in any vessels belonging to foreign powers which had not connected themselves with the government of the United States by commercial treaties. The recommendation of retaliatory measures, as has too frequently been the case in all ages and with all nations, found ready favour with the New England States, whose people were almost exclusively engaged in maritime pursuits. The merchants and shipowners of Boston, who had played so determined and conspicuous a part in the great revolution, were highly exasperated by their exclusion from the ports of the West Indies, and by the regulations adopted with regard to British fisheries in the American seas. They viewed also with alarm the establishment of British factors in their country. [Sidenote: Threatening attitude of Massachusetts.]