which might have been usefully exercised. The separate States, acting in reference to each other rather as independent sovereignties than as divisions of a homogeneous people, conceded to the common cause nothing which they could with any plausibility retain to themselves. And even the concessions, which they were persuaded to make, proved nominal, for the reason that they granted no means of coercion over themselves in cases when they refused to abide by them. The Congress in which the national power was vested was a deliberative body endowed with very feeble executive powers. There was no distinct national executive department, and no judiciary. The representatives of the States sat in conclave as fractional parts of the single vote each State was equally able to give, and performed their duty of recommending measures which it was never within their power to cause to be completed. They disputed with each other, they exhorted their constituency, sometimes they entreated and at others implored, but it was all of no avail. The state wheels would not move regularly when there was no force that could be brought to bear directly and simultaneously upon all, and the natural consequences of irregular motion ensued, disorder, discontent, and ultimate stoppage of the whole. The violence of war introduced anarchy enough in the United States while it lasted, but it was reserved for the establishment of peace to prove how fast the road to social disorganization can be travelled, when the people who hold the power are not willing to part with it in quantities sufficient to do them any good.

The Confederation may be considered as having fully illustrated by a ten years' operation the fatal error of its conception. To the most intelligent and best informed classes of the community, less than one half of that period had been. fully sufficient to make it apparent. But popular prejudices are always strong, and that in proportion as they are established upon some general axiom. The war of the Revolution had been a war for independence. And independence was synonymous in the minds of many with the largest liberty. Not absolutely with that kind of liberty which runs into open licentiousness, for that has never at any time been a favorite in America, but with as much freedom of individual action as can be reconciled with a social state. The idea of concentrating a new power, coextensive in some respects with that

which had just been thrown off, was not a very acceptable one. And it was nothing but the slowly extending consciousness of the deplorable state of things that was occurring by reason of the absence of it, which gave it any credit. The confederation had in its brief career been able to create a common debt; the States had incurred debts during the war; and the citizens in their private capacities had done the same, whilst engaged in the very necessary but unproductive duty of defending their rights. The industry of the country was in a state of stagnation. There was a necessity, that, in order to the liquidation of all these demands, it should be set in motion, and nothing could give it wholesome motion but that which was not then in existence, power in a national form of government. The people, not yet aware of the true nature of the disease that afflicted them, staggering under a burden too heavy for them to bear, inclined their ears as they always will in similar cases to the voice of demagogues. These will always be at hand in times of suffering, with nostrums of quackery to relieve the symptoms, and yet give greater ultimate violence to the complaint. What an awful catastrophe seemed impending over the brilliant outset of the Revolution. The courts of justice, through which the recovery of debts is usually effected, were threatened throughout the land. Bands of men were assembled in the Eastern States, who were working themselves rapidly up to the defiance of all law. Murmurs against the very appearance of aristocratical forms in the higher branch of the legislature of the States, were but preludes to a gathering storm directed against all inequality in the possession of property whatsoever. The foundations of the social system were in danger, because the people knew themselves to be wretched, but they did not know and were not yet in a temper to learn, what it was that was requisite to a reversal of their unfortunate condition.

It was a dismal hour for those patriots, who had led in the armies and in the councils of the country during the agony of war; dismal, because the reliance which they had had upon the reason of the people was fast sinking to nothing, under the demonstrations that were making before their eyes of the popular madness; dismal, because it seemed as if their very exertions in the common cause were about to be considered as a ground of reproach, and the claim to a pitiful compensation, to save them from starvation, was to be regarded as a

desire to impose an odious and unjustifiable public burden. It seemed as if the ignorant and the desperate, with no recommendation to credit but that of being brawling demagogues, were about to usurp the stations that had so far been filled by integrity and capacity. On every side was gloom. Great Britain was chuckling over the spectacle; France was filled with mortification; and all the other great powers of the world were looking with contempt upon a quarrelsome mob on the other side of the Atlantic, which, like a spoiled child, had whined and roared, and fought for the possession of at rinket, the true use of which, when obtained, it was unwilling or unable to learn.

In other countries a state of things like this would have ended in the establishment of an effective military monarchy. In America the eyes of the people were opened before the occurrence of any such necessity. The insurrection in the western part of Massachusetts carried with it a wholesome lesson to the minds of all thinking men throughout the Union. Hence it happened that all seemed lost, at the very moment when the causes were most rapidly maturing for a restoration. There were no military adventurers at once able and vicious enough to take advantage of the anarchical spirit, nor, even if there had been, is it probable they could have made much progress with the malecontents. These were poor and wretched, but they were not desperate. They were pushed to excesses by the pressure of the burdens that had fallen upon them, but they were not inclined to follow blindly the suggestions whatever they might be of any adventurous leader. Their rising was rather tumultuous than an organized plan, and their chiefs were men selected from among themselves with little regard to fitness for the duties they were expected to perform. It was a natural consequence, that, upon the first appearance of an organized resistance by the civil authority of the State, the assemblage dispersed. It thus did little mischief, but on the contrary a great deal of incidental good. It proved the death of the Confederation. The experiment had been carried far enough for every useful purpose. To persevere in it further was clearly a suicidal attempt. Nothing remained but to make a new effort at social organization. And in this all the ability, and the honesty, and the good sense of the country were now ready to combine. The fact was apparent, that if the States

should fail in devising some method of self-government that deserved the name, the independence they had expended so much blood and treasure to acquire was about to prove a misfortune instead of a blessing, and that the tyrannical exercise of power by Great Britain, which had been thought dangerous enough to justify resistance to the death, merited the title of maternal fondness in contrast with the license that seemed likely to succeed it. But this conviction, which was now generally established, had been wrought only by the experiment which had been made of Confederation. And it is in this point of view, that that plan must be considered as having served a highly useful purpose. Its failure satisfied the minds of a majority, that power must be actually vested in a central system, a belief which could make its way in America only by the strongest proof of necessity. But the fact that it did make its way in time for the common safety, constitutes a stronger argument in support of popular government on a large scale than all the abstract propositions that have ever been uttered.

Yet it must not be imagined that this general belief which had obtained, of the necessity of adopting a new form of government, extended to a proper idea of the degree of power which it was expedient to infuse into it. There were and still are many good citizens in the United States, who are so in love with the idea of liberty as to be always averse to a surrender of an effective portion of it. No one who knows the diversity of sentiment that prevails wherever there are numbers of human beings, will fail to understand the difficulty in the way of bringing a majority to agree in any definite remedy, or upon any single course of measures, to check the public distress. Neither was it until after long continued correspondence and repeated trials, that the same individuals who had gone through the heat of the revolutionary contest were enabled to persuade their countrymen to intrust them with the necessary discretion to devise one. It was a great step towards a brighter period when that confidence was finally given; for it showed, that, whatever might be the temporary caprice of the many, they still retained a capacity to appreciate the characters of those who most deserved their esteem. The moment of public danger is generally the test of popular opinions respecting men. In such a moment, the election of delegates to the Federal Convention that had

been agreed upon was entered upon in the States. The consequence was the choice of the best men, and the formation of an assembly as remarkable as can be found in the history of deliberative bodies. We call it remarkable, but not so much for genius, or eloquence, or learning, though it was not without all these attributes in some of its members, as for the spirit which animated its deliberations; a spirit filled with the difficulties of the task imposed, yet resolved to do all that could be done to overcome them; a spirit conscious of the responsibility which rested upon the movement, and of the fatal consequences that might succeed its failure. The result

was the Constitution of the United States.

But this result was not the work of any single man of the assembly. There was doubtless great inequality in the shares in which the several members contributed to it, but the fact, we think, is established, that almost every one contributed something. Conflicting interests often hit upon intermediate propositions, the merit of accepting which belongs to both, and that of originating them can yet be claimed by neither. Many of the most marked features of the instrument grew under the compound handling to which they were subjected, and all visibly improved as they passed along. How could such a process have been carried on, if the members had not been beforehand imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice of opinion, and had not with great singleness of mind devoted themselves to execute the solemn purpose for which they had been called together? There were not many subjects for discussion, upon which a tolerable degree of unanimity could be naturally expected; there were several, upon which the States were arrayed in diametrical opposition to one another. The fears of the small States were at war with the hopes of the large ones; the pride, with the jealousy, of state sovereignty; the navigating interests of the Northern, with the slave labor of the Southern States. And last though not least, the dread of an unbridled democracy had a sway not less marked, than that which saw in every concession of power an advance to consolidation and monarchical rule. There was scarcely a shade of opinion existing in America upon government, which had not its representation in the Federal Convention, from the ultra democracy of a single representative body, combining in itself all the attributes of sovereign power, which was the favorite doctrine of Dr. Franklin, to