to the foreign foe.  At different times different non-claimant States took the lead in pushing the various schemes for nationalizing the western lands; but Maryland was the first to take action in this direction, and was the most determined in pressing the matter to a successful issue.  She showed the greatest hesitation in joining the Confederation at all while the matter was allowed to rest unsettled; and insisted that the titles of the claimant States were void, that there was no need of asking them to cede what they did not possess, and that the West should be declared outright to be part of the Federal domain.

Maryland was largely actuated by fear of her neighbor Virginia.  Virginia’s claims were the most considerable, and if they had all been allowed, hers would have been indeed an empire.  Maryland’s fears were twofold.  She dreaded the mere growth of Virginia in wealth, power, and population in the first place; and in the second she feared lest her own population might be drained into these vacant lands, thereby at once diminishing her own, and building up her neighbor’s, importance.  Each State, at that time, had to look upon its neighbors as probable commercial rivals and possible armed enemies.  This is a feeling which we now find difficulty in understanding.  At present no State in the Union fears the growth of a neighbor, or would ever dream of trying to check that growth.  The direct reverse was the case during and after the Revolution; for the jealousy and distrust which the different States felt for one another were bitter to a degree.

    The Continental Congress Advocates a Compromise.

The Continental Congress was more than once at its wits’ ends in striving to prevent an open break over the land question between the more extreme States on the two sides.  The wisest and coolest leaders saw that the matter could never be determined on a mere consideration of the abstract rights, or even of the equities, of the case.  They saw that it would have to be decided, as almost all political questions of great importance must be decided, by compromise and concession.  The foremost statesmen of the Revolution were eminently practical politicians.  They had high ideals, and they strove to realize them, as near as might be; otherwise they would have been neither patriots nor statesmen.  But they were not theorists.  They were men of affairs, accustomed to deal with other men; and they understood that few questions of real moment can be decided on their merits alone.  Such questions must be dealt with on the principle of getting the greatest possible amount of ultimate good, and of surrendering in return whatever must be surrendered in order to attain this good.  There was no use in learned arguments to show that Maryland’s position was the proper one for a far-sighted American patriot, or that Virginia and North Carolina had more basis for their claims than Connecticut or Georgia.  What had to be done was to appeal to the love of country and shrewd common-sense of the people in the different States, and persuade them each to surrender on certain points, so that all could come to a common agreement.