of the respective States to regulate their own separate interests renders
it absolutely necessary, towards forming a permanent system of commerce,
that my court should be informed how far the commissioners can be duly
authorized to enter into any engagement with Great Britain which it may
not be in the power of any one of the States to render totally useless and
inefficient."

[Sidenote: Loyalists.]
[Sidenote: British debts.]
[Sidenote: Posts.]

There were other reasons why the British continued to subject American
ships in English ports to discriminations and duties from which the
vessels of most other powers were exempt. The treaty of 1783 had provided
that Congress would recommend to the States just treatment of the
loyalists; the recommendation was made. Most of the States declined to
comply; men who had been eminent before the Revolution returned to find
themselves distrusted, and sometimes were mobbed; their estates, which in
most cases had been confiscated, were withheld, and they could obtain no
consideration. This was unfriendly, but not a violation of any promise.
The action of the States in placing obstacles in the way of collecting
debts due to British merchants before the Revolution was a vexatious
infraction of the treaty. Five States had passed laws for the partial or
complete confiscation of such debts, and even after the treaty
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts passed similar Acts. As an offset, the
British minister in 1786 declared that the frontier posts would not be
surrendered so long as the obstacles to the collection of British debts
were left standing.

[Sidenote: The Spanish treaty.]