existence, involved in all the disgrace and mischiefs of violated faith and national bankruptcy.1

While, therefore, the United States emerged from the war, which for seven long years had wasted the energies and drained the resources of the people, with national independence, dark and portentous clouds gathered about the dawn of peace, as the future opened before them. The past had been crowned with victory; - dearly bought, but not at too dear a price, for it brought with it the vast boon of civil liberty. But the dangers and embarrassments through which that victory had been achieved made it apparent that the government of the country was unequal to its protection and prosperity. That government was now called to assume the great duties of peace, without the acknowledged power of maintaining either an army or a navy, and without the means of combining and directing the forces and wills of the several parts to a general end; without the least control over commerce; without the power to fulfil a treaty; without laws acting upon individuals; and with no mode of enforcing its own will, but by coercing a delinquent State to its federal obligations by force of arms. How it met the great demands upon its energy and durability which its new duties involved, we are now to inquire.

1 Hamilton's proposed Resolutions; Life, II. 230–237.

BOOK III.

THE

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED

STATES, FROM THE PEACE OF 1783 ΤΟ THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787.

DUTIES AND

CHAPTER I.

JANUARY, 1784 - MAY, 1787.

NECESSITIES OF CONGRESS. REQUISITIONS ON
STATES. - REVENUE SYSTEM OF 1783.

THE

THE period which now claims our attention is that extending from the Peace of 1783 to the calling of the Convention which framed the Constitution, in 1787. It was a period full of dangers and difficulties. The destinies of the Union seemed to be left to all the hazards arising from a defective government and the illiberal and contracted policy of its members. Patriotism was generally thought to consist in adhesion to State interests, and a reluctance to intrust power to the organs of the nation. The national obligations were therefore disregarded; treaty stipulations remained unfulfilled; the great duty of justice failed to be discharged; rebellion raised a dangerous and nearly successful front; and the commerce of the country was exposed to the injurious policy of other nations, with no means of counteracting or escaping from its effects. At length, the people of the United States began to see danger after they had felt it, and the growth of sounder views and higher principles of public

conduct gave to the friends of order, public faith, and national security a controlling influence in the country, and enabled the men, who had won for it the blessings of liberty, to establish for it a durable and sufficient government.

Four years only elapsed, between the return of peace and the downfall of a government which had been framed with the hope and promise of perpetual duration; an interval of time no longer than that during which the people of the United States are now accustomed to witness a change of their rulers, without injury to any principle or any form of their institutions. But this brief interval was full of suffering and peril. There are scarcely any evils or dangers, of a political nature, and springing from political and social causes, to which a free people can be exposed, which the people of the United States did not experience during this period. That these evils and dangers did not precipitate the country into civil war, and that the great undertaking of forming a new and constitutional government, by delegates of the people, could be entered upon and prosecuted, with the calmness, conciliation, and concession essential to its success, is owing partly to the fact that the country had scarcely recovered from the exhausting effects of the Revolutionary struggle; but mainly to the existence of a body of statesmen, formed during that struggle, and fitted by hard experience to build up the government. But before their efforts and their influences are explained, the period which developed the necessity for their interposition must be described.