In fact, the Confederation and its woes hardly occupied the thoughts of the people at all, except as a subject for jest and ridicule. The newspapers made merry over the peregrinations of Congress. Frightened away from Philadelphia by the riotous conduct of some troops of the Pennsylvania line, who had imbibed too freely, the delegates had withdrawn first to Princeton and then to Annapolis. Thither Washington repaired to resign his commission; but even so notable an occasion as this brought together delegates from only seven of the States. The best talent in America was drafted into the service of the several States. Men had ceased to think continentally. "A selfish habitude of thinking and reasoning," wrote one who styled himself Yorick, in the _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." 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.