A careless man with his papers and his accounts is the good Dr. Franklin. When he returns to America and faces a congressional committee he is found to be half a million dollars short.

"How about this deficit, doctor?" In answer to so natural a question the good doctor says: "I was taught when a boy to read the Scriptures and attend to them, and it is there said: muzzle not the ox that treadeth out his master's grain."

Of Franklin's honesty there could be no reasonable doubt; the money had probably been used in Europe as secret-service funds are generally used.

CHAPTER XXXII

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

OUT of the Committees of Correspondence grew the Congress, suggested by Massachusetts and brought into being by the prompt, warm-hearted action of South Carolina. Out of the Congress grew the Articles of Confederation. The principal defects of these articles were: (1) They gave the General Government no right of taxation; (2) no power to regulate commerce; (3) no power over the citizen directly; (4) no power to enforce its will; (5) no real executive.

Congress might need money and troops, but it could not directly raise either. Requisitions had to be made on the States; and when the States refused to honor the requisitions, the General Government had no power to enforce its demands. Every State could lay its duties, upon commerce, and thus there could be thirteen different, antagonistic systems in operation within the Confederation. Undoubtedly this government was too weak. The central power was not a power. The thirteen sovereign, independent States had too jealously retained their own sovereignty.

Against these defects Washington had strug

gled as best he could during the war, but with the deepest conviction that no effective government was possible until they were cured.

The central power sank into contempt after the peace. Members of Congress often stayed at home, leaving their States unrepresented. There were practically no natural revenues with which to pay off the war debts. The army dwindled to less than one hundred men. Between citizens of Pennsylvania and Connecticut there was much fighting, much property destroyed, and many lives lost. Wyoming Valley, which had been swept with fire and sword in 1778 by British, Indians, and Tories, was now laid waste again by the troops of Pennsylvania-the victims, this time, being settlers from Connecticut. The dispute was over the title to the land.

New Jersey and Connecticut were embroiled in a commercial war with New York. It had reached an acute stage, where it seemed certain that powder would soon burn and bullets fly.

Shays's Rebellion broke out in Massachusetts, and while it amounted to nothing and was soon put down without bloodshed, it did not strengthen the government which survived it, as most rebellions

do.

People who wanted a stronger government made immense capital out of Shays's poor little disturbance, and it rings with distressing loudness in

Federalist histories till this day-the writers drawing lessons from it directly opposite to those drawn from the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania after the Federalists had got what they wanted.

Delegates to adjust commercial differences between Virginia and Maryland, growing out of navigation of the Potomac, meet in Alexandria, and Washington is there. The delegates go to Mount Vernon, and conferences with Washington take place. Another commercial meeting is called on a larger scale, and now James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Edmund Randolph become active. The Annapolis Convention takes good care not to regulate the commerce which needed regulation, and the scope of the movement is skilfully broadened until it becomes a constitutional convention, to meet at Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation.

The manner in which this apparently local and unimportant commercial movement was nursed and fed and disguised, until it became a national convention, determined upon the creation of an entirely new government, is a wonderful instance of political finesse and management. A few able, expert, long-headed gentlemen recognize the necessity for a strong government, in which the democratic features shall be subordinate. They know that the least exposure of their scheme means death to it. They keep the real purpose hidden from

sight. Just as the fiction of loyalty to the King had been kept up until it was perfectly safe to ring the Liberty Bell, so now the subterfuge of regulating commerce was used as a screen for the constitutional convention.

Tazewell Hall, sitting on its green terrace at Williamsburg, was a fair specimen of the oldfashioned home in Virginia-the house of scholarly, hospitable John Randolph, royal attorneygeneral of the colony during the time of Lord Dunmore.

This was one of the centers of fashionable life. Crown officers were at ease here; and whatever lord or lady from the mother country happened to visit Williamsburg was sure to be entertained at Tazewell Hall.

Here also were seen in familiar social intercourse with the Randolphs and with each other such men as Washington, Page, Lee, Nelson, Wythe, Pendleton Harrison, Tucker, and Jefferson. Many a time the large barn-like but most comfortable old mansion was filled with music as the King's attorney bent lovingly over that celebrated Cremona violin and played a duet with the freckle-faced lord of Monticello. Many a time Lord Dunmore, guiltless as yet of burning Virginia towns and attempts at negro insurrections, chatted