[Sidenote: Frontier difficulties.]

The interior of the country was in a confused and alarming state. The
territorial settlement with the States had only begun, and was to be the
work of years. The Indians were a stumbling-block which must be removed
from the path of the settlers. Within the States there were poverty,
taxation, and disorder, and a serious discontent.

[Sidenote: Common institutions.]

Nevertheless, the system of the colonies was a system of union. The State
governments all rested on the same basis of revolution and defiance of
former established law; but when they separated from England they
preserved those notions of English private and public law which had
distinguished the colonies. The laws and the governments of the States
were everywhere similar. The States were one in language, in religion, in
traditions, in the memories of a common struggle, and in political and
economic interests.

[Sidenote: Trade hampered.]

Commercially, however, the situation of the country was worse than it had
been in three quarters of a century. Though the fisheries had been saved
by the efforts of Adams, the market for the surplus fish was taken away.
As colonies they had enjoyed the right to trade with other British
colonies; as an independent nation they had only those rights which
England chose to give. For a time the ministry seemed disposed to make a
favorable commercial treaty; but in 1783 an Order in Council was issued
cutting off the Americans from the West Indian trade; and it was not until