Proof of this. The truth of this statement can be easily tested. If you wish to determine the extent to which an organization which claims to be a government really is what it claims to be, you can apply a simple and, at the same time, infallible test. Ask to what extent it can do things; to what extent its edicts operate directly on individuals. Applying this test, we see that Congress could not provide a revenue, it could only ask the states for money; it could not raise an army,-it could only call upon the states for troops; it could not enforce treaties,-it could only request the states to enforce them. As to the regulation of commerce and the enforcement of the obligations of contract, the Articles of Confederation did not even attempt to confide them to the care of Congress. In reference to all these matters-matters of vital moment to the nation's well-being-the Congress of the Confederation was not a government. Explanation of Congress. We have already noticed the explanation of the remarkable fact that the men of the Revolution tried to govern with a government to which the character of they had given no adequate powers: the people did not look upon themselves as a nation; they had not attained to national self-consciousness. In a noble letter which Washington addressed to the governors of the states in June, 1783, he said that a willingness on the part of the people to sacrifice some of their local interests to the common good was essential to the very existence of the United States as a nation. But the people of the various states were not willing to make sacrifices for the common good; they did not regard themselves as citizens of a common country. The love of the union which seventy-five years later had become a passion hardly existed then. The federal government was the mere creature of convenience, -not the embodiment/ and home of a deep-seated idea. The object of no regard, the centre of no affections, the government of the Confederation was created with the central idea of making an abuse of power impossible. But the only way to make an abuse of power impossible is to grant no power to be abused. This is why the United States created a government and withheld from it powers of such vital importance. The result was that Alternatives in by 1787 it had become clear to all thought- 1787. ful men that the nation was confronted with these alternatives: it must give itself a government with adequate powers or sink, in the language of Washington, into wretched and contemptible fragments of empire. To create such a government was the work that called the Federalist party into existence. CHAPTER II. ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A REVENUE. WE Need of a government power to raise money. E shall better realize the causes that led to the organization of the Federalist party if we make clear to ourselves the particulars in which the with lack of a government with adequate powers proved most embarrassing. One of these particulars, it is unnecessary to say, related to the raising of money. Money was necessary to the government. Whoever, therefore, was interested in the continued existence of the government felt the necessity of investing it with power to raise money. Whoever, also, was interested in having a government which could raise money was interested in the creation of a government of adequate powers. With power to cial regulations. In Another difficulty related to the making of commercial regulations. The lack of this power was not, indeed, due to the same cause as the lack make commer- of power to levy and collect taxes. adopting the Articles of Confederation, the states solemnly promised to abide by the decisions of Congress in all the matters which those Articles committed to its control. The making of requisitions for money was one of those matters. The promise to grant those requisitions was made because no one was visionary enough to suppose that the government could exist without money, to say nothing of performing the work expected of it. As the states were unwilling to give Congress any power, the only thing possible was the promise to exercise their power in raising money for the government whenever Congress requested it. But as the necessity of a uniform control of commerce was not equally evident, the states did not even promise, as we have seen, to pay any attention to the wishes of Congress in relation to commerce. With power to enforce the ob tract. Another defect in the government was lack of power in Congress to prevent the states from passing laws which violated the obligations of contract. This power also was not even nominally ligations of convested in Congress by the Articles of Confederation. That the people of the states might choose to pass laws which struck at the very foundations of society, laws which tended to make the word 'contract' mean a mere promise on the part of the contracting parties to do the things specified in the contract,—not an obligation which the whole power of society was pledged to enforce,-laws, therefore, which created a universal feeling of uncertainty, in the states in which they were passed, as to whether the terms of a contract would be observed, apparently had not occurred to the men who framed the Articles of Confederation. Hence it happened that the states were not even asked to promise that laws of this description should not be passed. These three, then-the inability of Congress to levy and collect taxes, to make commercial regulations, to prevent the states from stepping between the debtor and his creditor—were the defects which brought most vividly to the minds of large numbers of people the fact that they were without a government of adequate powers, and made them realize most forcibly the need of one. The imperative necessity of vesting in Congress power to provide an adequate revenue very early attracted the attention of thoughtful men. On November 11, 1780, a convention of delegates from Convention of New York and the four New England states sent a circular letter to all of the "Our embarrassments arise states, in which they said: from a defect in the present government of the United States. All government supposes the power of coercion; this power, however, never did exist in the general government of the continent, or has never been exercised. Under these circumstances, the resources and force of the country can never be properly united and called forth."* A radical recommendation. The proceedings of this convention were referred in December to a committee of Congress, of which James Madison was a member. Madison's report submitted in March, 1781, made a very radical recommendation: "The Articles of Confederation, which declare that every state shall abide by the * Bancroft's History of the Constitution, I., 14. |