formation of beneficial
treaties with foreign powers, and has given occasions of dissatisfaction
between the States. No nation acquainted with the nature of our
political association would be unwise enough to enter into stipulations
with the United States, by which they conceded privileges of any
importance to them, while they were apprised that the engagements on the
part of the Union might at any moment be violated by its members, and
while they found from experience that they might enjoy every advantage
they desired in our markets, without granting us any return but such as
their momentary convenience might suggest. It is not, therefore, to be
wondered at that Mr. Jenkinson, in ushering into the House of Commons a
bill for regulating the temporary intercourse between the two countries,
should preface its introduction by a declaration that similar provisions
in former bills had been found to answer every purpose to the commerce
of Great Britain, and that it would be prudent to persist in the plan
until it should appear whether the American government was likely or not
to acquire greater consistency.(1)

Several States have endeavored, by separate prohibitions, restrictions,
and exclusions, to influence the conduct of that kingdom in this
particular, but the want of concert, arising from the want of a general
authority and from clashing and dissimilar views in the State, has
hitherto frustrated every experiment of the kind, and will continue to
do so as long as the same obstacles to a uniformity of measures continue
to exist.

The interfering and unneighborly regulations of some States, contrary to
the true spirit of the Union, have, in different instances, given just
cause of umbrage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared that
examples of this nature, if not restrained by a national control, would
be multiplied and extended till they became not less serious sources
of animosity and discord than injurious impediments to the intercourse
between the different parts of the Confederacy. "The commerce of the
German empire(2) is in continual trammels from the multiplicity of the
duties which the several princes and states exact upon the merchandises
passing through their territories, by means of which the fine streams
and navigable rivers with which Germany is so happily watered are
rendered almost useless." Though the genius of the people of this
country might never permit this description to be strictly applicab