eventually to answer. They could only resolve and recommend; and accordingly, after having declared that the legislatures of the States could not, of right, do any thing to explain, interpret, or limit the operation of a treaty, Congress recommended to the States to pass a general law, repealing all their former acts that might be repugnant to the Treaty, and leaving to their courts of justice to decide causes that might arise under it, according to its true intent and meaning, by determining what acts contravened its provisions.1 This recommendation manifestly left the interests of the Union exposed to two hazards; the one, that the legislatures of the States might not pass the repealing statute, which would submit the proper questions to their courts, and the other, that their courts might not decide with firmness and impartiality between the policy of the State, on the one hand, and the interests of foreigners and obnoxious Tories, on the other.

But this was all that could be done, and partial success only followed the effort. Most of the States passed acts, in compliance with the recommendation of Congress, to repeal their laws which prevented the recovery of British debts. But the State of Virginia, although it passed such an act, suspended its operation, until the Governor of the State should issue a proclamation, giving notice that Great Britain had delivered up the Western posts, and was

1 March 21, 1787.

2 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,

Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina passed such acts.

taking measures for the further fulfilment of the Treaty, by delivering up the negroes belonging to the citizens of that State, which had been carried away, or by making compensation for their value.1 The two countries were thus brought to a stand, in their efforts to adjust the matters in dispute, and the Western posts remained in the occupation of British garrisons, inflaming the hostile temper of the Indian tribes, and enhancing the difficulty of settling the vacant lands in the fertile region of the Great Lakes.2

Pitkin's History of the United States, II. 198.

2 Marshall's Life of Washington, V. 67, 68.

CHAPTER III.

1786-1787.

NO SECURITY AFFORDED BY THE CONFEDERATION TO THE STAte Gev ERNMENTS. -SHAYS'S REBELLION IN MASSACHUSETTS, AND ITS KIN DRED DISTURBANCES.

No federative government can be of great perma nent value, which is not so constructed that it may stand, in some measure, as the common sovereign of its members, able to protect them against internal disorders, as well as against external assaults. The Confederation undertook but one of these great duties. It was formed at a time when the war with England was the great object of concern to the revolted Colonies, and when they felt only the exigencies which that war created. Hence its most impor tant powers, as well as its leading purpose, concerned the common cause of resistance to a foreign domination. A federal league of States independent of each other, formed principally for mutual defence against a common enemy, was all that succeeded to the general superintending power of the British crown, by which the internal affairs of each of them had always been regulated and controlled, in the last reWhen the tie was broken by which they had

sort.

been held to the parent state, each of them created for itself a new government, resting for its basis on the popular will, and deriving its authority directly from the people; but none of them provided for the creation of a power, external to itself, which might stand as the guarantor and protector of their new institutions, and secure the principles on which they rested against violence and overthrow. Yet the constitutions thus formed, from their peculiar nature, eminently needed the safeguards which such a power could afford.

These constitutions were admirably constructed. They contained principles imperfectly known to the ancient governments; found in modern times only in the government of England; and applied there with far less consistency and completeness. They embraced the regular distribution of political power into distinct departments; legislative checks and balances, by means of two coördinate branches of the legislature; a judiciary in general holding office during good behaviour; and the representation of the people in the legislature, by deputies of their own actual election, in which the theory of such representation was more perfectly carried into practice than it had ever been in the country from which it was derived. But the fundamental principle on which they all rested, and without which they could not maintain existence, required means of defence. They were established upon the great doctrine, that it is the right of every political society to govern itself, and for the purposes of such self-government,

to create such constitutions and ordain such fundamental laws as its own judgment and its own intelligent choice may find best suited to its own interests. But society can act only by an expression of the aggregate will of its members; and as there may be members who dissent from the views and determinations of the great mass of society, and it is therefore necessary to decide with whom the power of compelling obedience resides, since there must be obedience in order that there may be peace, nature and reason have determined that this power is to reside with a majority of the members. The American constitutions, therefore, are founded wholly upon the principle, that a majority expresses the will of the whole society, and may establish, change, and abrogate forms of government at its pleasure.1 It follows, as a necessary deduction from this fundamental doctrine, that so soon as society has acted in the formation and establishment of a government, upon this principle, no change can take place, but

1 Gibbon, with that graceful satire which knew how to hit two objects with the same stroke of his pen, describes hereditary monarchy

as

"an expedient which deprives the multitude of the dangerous, and indeed the ideal, power of giving themselves a master." The historian of the Decline and Fall began to publish his great work, just as the American Revolution burst upon the world. Since that sentence was penned, the experiment of a system, by which the multitude give to themselves a master,

in the constitutional organs of their own will, has had a fair trial. We may not say that its trial is past, or that the system is established beyond the possibility of further dangers. But we may with a just pride point to its escape, in the days of its first establishment and greatest danger, and to the securities which the Constitution of the United States now affords, against similar perils, when they threaten the constitutions of the States.