The following pages are frankly fragmentary. They are designed to suggest new lines of historical research rather than to treat the subject in an exhaustive fashion. This apology is not intended as an anticipation of the criticism of reviewers, but as a confession of fact. No one can appreciate more fully than I do how much of the work here outlined remains to be done. The records of The Treasury Department at Washington, now used for the first time in connection with a study of the formation of the Constitution, furnish a field for many years’ research, to say nothing of the other records, printed and unprinted, which throw light upon the economic conditions of the United States between 1783 – 1787.