For example, a letter from Philadelphia, under date of August 29, 1787, sums up concisely the interests which were turning to the new Constitution: “The states neglect their roads and canals, till they see whether those necessary improvements will not become the objects of a national government. Trading and manufacturing companies suspend their voyages and manufactures till they see how far their commerce will be protected and promoted by a national system of commercial regulations. The lawful usurer locks up or buries his specie till he sees whether the new frame of government will deliver him from the curse or fear of paper money and the tender laws.... The public creditor, who, from the deranged state of finances in every state and their total inability to support their partial funding systems, has reason to fear that his certificates will perish in his hands, now places all his hopes of justice in an enlightened and stable national government. The embarrassed farmer and the oppressed tenant, who wishes to become free ... by emigrating to a frontier country, wait to see whether they shall be protected by a national force from the Indians.”[[77]]
A final answer to the second question propounded above would require an exhaustive analysis of the “movement for the Constitution,” in the following form:—
1. A study of the economic forces in the Revolution and particularly in the Continental Congress that drafted the Articles of Confederation.
2. An inquiry into the first signs of discontent with the prevailing system, their geographic distribution, and their economic sources.
3. An examination of the several attempts in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation to secure the power to regulate commerce and establish a revenue for discharging the debt.
4. A description of the economic interests of all the members who were most active in these attempts.
5. A description of the economic forces in the communities whose representatives in Congress were zealous in securing a revision of the Articles.
6. A study of the nature and distribution of the several legislative attacks on private rights in property between 1783 and 1787.
7. A minute study of the personnel of the movement for revision and the economic interests of the leading spirits in Congress and the state legislatures and outside of legislative chambers.
Any one superficially acquainted with the sources of American history will see at once the nature of the work which must be done to secure the raw materials for such a study. The enormous mass of unprinted papers of the Continental Congress in the Library at Washington would have to be thoroughly searched; proceedings in state legislatures during the years under consideration would have to be scrutinized; local archives and newspapers would have to be examined.