Although any
State could levy impost duties on goods coming into it from another
State the same as from a foreign country, thereby engendering endless
dispute, the Central Government had no court or other means of settling
such contentions or of getting redress for individuals.
With such false conceptions of the relations between individualism and
unionism, with a national frame foredoomed to failure, with the
distracting situations of the war still upon them, the people of the
United States attempted in 1783 to take that stand among the nations
which they declared God had given them. At once they came into contact
with the habits and precedents of old and well-established governments.
Diplomacy is not a game for amateurs. Fortunately a decade was to
elapse before a European crisis would call attention to the new-comer
as a possible pawn in the game. Their first introduction in the
character of solicitors for aid had not been auspicious. The process
of securing this aid had gained for them a treaty with France and
indirectly with Holland; but Spain, more suspicious of the new nation
because of the proximity of her Floridas and Louisiana to them, still
dallied with their advances.
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