He treated the States, after the close of the peace of 1783, with a haughty assumption of superiority, if not indeed with contempt--not even condescending to accredit a diplomatic representative to the country, though John Adams was in London as Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary from the United States.

English laws of protection under the Pitt administration were steadily framed against the development of manufactures and navigation in America, and the tendency when the Federal Constitution was adopted had been, in the planting States especially, towards a species of commercial dependence which was enabling England to absorb our trade.
TARIFF ACT APPROVED BY WASHINGTON.
The first tariff Act was therefore in a certain sense a second Declaration of Independence; and by a coincidence which could not have been more striking or more significant, it was approved by President Washington on the fourth day of July, 1789.

Slow as were the modes of communicating intelligence in those days, this Act of Congress did, in a suggestive way, arouse the attention of both continents.

The words of the preamble were ominous.

The duties levied were exceedingly moderate, scarcely any of them above fifteen per cent, the majority not higher than ten.