in furs. In the spring of 1787 there
were advertised for sale in London more than 360,000 skins, worth
$1,200,000 at the lowest estimate; and had the posts been surrendered
according to the treaty, all this would have passed through the hands of
American merchants. The London fur-traders were naturally loth to lose
their control over this business, and in the language of modern politics
they brought "pressure" to bear on the government to retain the
fortresses as long as possible. The American refusal to pay British
creditors furnished an excellent excuse, while the weakness of Congress
made any kind of reprisal impossible; and it was not until Washington's
second term as president, after our national credit had been restored
and the strength of our new government made manifest, that England
surrendered this chain of strongholds, commanding the woods and waters
of our northwestern frontier.

CHAPTER IV.

DRIFTING TOWARD ANARCHY.

[Sidenote: Barbarous superstitions about trade.]

At the close of the eighteenth century the barbarous superstitions of
the Middle Ages concerning trade between nations still flourished with
scarcely diminished vitality. The epoch-making work of Adam Smith had
been published in the same year in which the United States declared
their independence. The one was the great scientific event, as the other
was the great political event of the age; but of neither the one nor the
other were the scope and purport fathomed at the time. Among the
foremost statesmen, those who, like Shelburne and Gallatin, understood
the principles of the "Wealth of Nations" were few indeed. The simple
principle that when two parties trade both must be gainers, or one would
soon stop trading, was generally lost sight of; and most commercial
legislation proceeded upon the theory that in trade, as in gambling or
betting, what the one party gains the other must lose. Hence towns,
districts, and nations surrounded themselves with walls of legislative
restrictions intended to keep out the monster Trade, or to admit him
only on strictest proof that he could do no harm. On this barbarous
theory, the use of a colony consisted in its being a customer which you
could compel to trade with yourself, while you could prevent it from
trading with anybody else; and having secured this point, you could
cunningly arrange things by legislation so as to throw all the loss upon
this enforced customer, and keep all the gain to yourse