During the period which elapsed from the Treaty of Peace with England to the assembling of the Convention at Annapolis, the legislation of the different States, designed to protect themselves against the policy of England, was of course without system or concert, and without uniformity of regulation. At one time duties were made extravagantly high; at another, competition reduced them below the point at which any considerable revenue could be derived. At one time, the States acted in open hostility to each other; at another, they contemplated commercial leagues, without regard to the prohibition contained in the Articles of Confederation. No steady system was pursued by any of them, and the inefficacy of State legislation became at length so apparent, that a conviction of the necessity of new powers in Congress forced itself upon the public mind. FOOTNOTES: [271] Life of Hamilton, II. 233, 234. See also his resolutions on the defects of the federal government, intended to be offered in Congress in 1783, and especially the eighth resolution. Works of Hamilton, II. 269. [272] Hamilton himself, in some papers which he published in 1781, under the title of The Continentalist, gave the general sum of American statesmanship and its opportunities, down to that period. The events of the next seven years gave it a wonderful development. "It would be the extreme of vanity in us," said he, "not to be sensible that we began this revolution with very vague and confined notions of the practical business of government. To the greater part of us, it was a novelty; of those who under the former constitution had had opportunities of acquiring experience, a large proportion adhered to the opposite side, and the remainder can only be supposed to have possessed ideas adapted to the narrow colonial sphere in which they had been accustomed to move, not of that enlarged kind suited to the government of an independent nation. There were, no doubt, exceptions to these observations;--men in all respects qualified for conducting the public affairs with skill and advantage;--but their number was small; they were not always brought forward in our councils; and when they were, their influence was too commonly borne down by the prevailing torrent of ignorance and prejudice. On a retrospect, however, of our transactions, under the disadvantages with which we commenced, it is perhaps more to be wondered at, that we have done so well, than that we have not done better. There are, indeed, some traits in our conduct, as conspicuous for sound policy as others for magnanimity. But, on the other hand, it must also be confessed, there have been many false steps, many chimerical projects and Utopian speculations, in the management of our civil as well as of our military affairs. A part of these were the natural effects of the spirit of the times, dictated by our situation. An extreme jealousy of power is the attendant on all popular revolutions, and has seldom been