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CHAPTER VI.

1783-1787.

DECAY AND FAILURE OF THE CONFEDERATION.

PROGRESS OF OPINION. STEPS WHICH LED TO THE CONVENTION OF 1787. — InfluENCE AND EXERTIONS OF HAMILTON. MEETING OF THE CONVEN

TION.

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THE prominent defects in the Confederation, which have been described in the previous chapters, and which were so rapidly developed after the treaty of 1783, made it manifest, that a mere league between independent States, with no power of direct legisla tion, was not a government for a country like this, in a time of peace. They showed, that this compact between the States, without any central arbiter to declare or power to enforce the duties which it involved, could not long continue. It had, indeed, answered the great purpose of forming the Union, by bringing the States into relations with each other, the continuance of which was essential to liberty; since nothing could follow the rupture of those relations but the reëstablishment of European power, or the native despotism which too often succeeds to civil commotion. By creating a corporate body of confederate States, and by enabling them to go into the

money-markets of Europe for the means of carrying on and concluding the war, the Confederation had made the idea and the necessity of a Union familiar to the popular mind. But the purposes and objects of the war were far less complex and intricate than the concerns of peace. It was comparatively easy to borrow money. It was another thing to pay it. The federal power, under the Confederation, had little else to do, before the peace, than to administer the concerns of an army in the field, and to attend to the foreign relations of the country, as yet not complicated with questions of commerce. But the vast duties, capable of being discharged by no other power, which came rapidly into existence before the creation of the machinery essential to their performance, exhibited the Confederation in an alarming attitude.

It was found to be destitute of the essence of political sovereignty, the power to compel the individual inhabitants of the country to obey its decrees. It was a system of legislation for States in their corporate and collective capacities, and not for the individuals of whom those States were composed. It could not levy a dollar by way of impost or assessment upon the property of a citizen. It had no

means of annulling the action of a State legislature, which conflicted with the lawful and constitutional requirements of Congress. It made treaties, and was forced to stand still and see them violated by its own members, for whose benefit they had been made. It owed an enormous debt, and saw itself, year by

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year, growing more and more unable to liquidate even the annually increasing interest. It stood in the relation of a protector to the principles of republican liberty on which the institutions of the States were founded, and on the first occurrence of danger, it stretched forward only a palsied arm, to which no man could look for succor. It undertook to rescue commerce from the blighting effects of foreign policy, and failed to achieve a single conspicuous and important advantage. Every day it lost something of respect abroad and of confidence at home, until all men saw, with Washington, that it had become a great shadow without the substance of a government; while few could even conjecture what was to rise to rise up and supplant it.

Few men could see, amidst the decay of empire and the absolute negation of all the vital and essential functions of government, what was to infuse new life into a system so nearly effete. Yet the elements of strength existed in the character of the people; in the assimilation, which might be produced, in the lapse of years, by a common language, a common origin, and a common destiny;-in the almost boundless resources of the country;—and, above all, in the principles of its ancient local institutions, that were capable, to an extent not then conceived, of expansion and application to objects of far greater magnitude than any which they had yet embraced. Through what progress of opinion the people of this country were enabled to grasp and combine these elements

into a new system, which could satisfy their wants, we must now inquire.

In this inquiry, the student of political history should never fail to observe, that the great difficulty of the case, which made it so complex and embarrassing, arose from the separate, sovereign, and independent existence of the States. The formation of new constitutions, in countries not thus divided, involves only the adaptation of new institutions and forms to the genius, the laws, and the habits of the people. The monarchy of France has, in our day, been first remodelled, and afterwards swept from the face of Europe, to be followed by a republican constitution, which has in its turn been crushed and superseded. But France is a country that has long been subjected to as complete and powerful a system of centralization as has existed anywhere since the most energetic period of the Roman empire; and whether its institutions of government have or have not needed to be changed, as they have been from time to time, those changes have been made in a country in which an entire political unity has greatly facilitated the operation.

In the United States, on the contrary, a federal government was to be created; and it was to be created for thirteen distinct communities;-a government that should not destroy the political sovereignties of the States, and should yet introduce a new sovereignty, formed by means of powers, whose surrender by the States, instead of weakening their present strength, would rather develop and increase it.

This peculiar difficulty may be constantly traced, amidst all the embarrassments of the period in which the fundamental idea of the Constitution was at length evolved.

The progress of opinion and feeling in this country, on the subject of its government, from the peace of 1783 to the year 1787, may properly be introduced by a brief statement of the political tendencies of two principal classes of men. All contemporary evidence assures us that this was a period of great pecuniary distress, arising from the depreciation of the vast quantities of paper money issued by the Federal and State governments; from rash speculations; from the uncertain and fluctuating condition of trade; and from the great amount of foreign goods forced into the country as soon as its ports were opened. Naturally, in such a state of things, the debtors were disposed to lean in favor of those systems of government and legislation which would tend to relieve or postpone the payment of their debts; and as such relief could come only from their State governments, they were naturally the friends of State rights and State authority, and were consequently not friendly to any enlargement of the powers of the Federal Constitution. The same causes which led individuals to look to legislation for irregular relief from the burden of their private contracts, led them also to regard public obligations with similar impatience. Opposed to this numerous class of persons were all those who felt the high necessity of preserving inviolate every public and private obligation; who saw

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