come.

a title which nothing but the paramount equity of the claims of the whole Confederacy ought to have overThat equity she acknowledged. She threw aside her charters and her title-deeds; she ceased to use the language of royal grants, and discarded the principle of succession. She came forth from among her parchments into the forum of conscience, in presence of the whole American people; and-recog nizing the justice of their claim to territories gained by their common efforts -to secure the inestimable blessings of union, for their good and for her own, she submitted to the national will the determination of her western boundaries, and devoted to the national benefit her vast claims to unoccupied territories.

Equal honor should be rendered to New Jersey, to Delaware, and to Maryland. The two former, without waiting for the action of a single State within whose reputed limits these public domains were situate, trusted wholly to a future sense of justice, and ratified the Union in the confidence that justice would be done. The latter waited; but only until she saw that the common enemy was encouraged, and that friends were disheartened, by her reserve. Seeing this, she hesitated no longer, but completed the union of the States before Virginia had made the cession, which afterwards so nobly justified the confidence that had been placed in her.1

1 After the Confederation had thus been formed, by subsequent cessions of their claims by the other States, to use the language

of Mr. Justice Story, "this great source of national dissension was at last dried up."

The student of American constitutional history, therefore, cannot fail to see, that the adoption of the first written constitution was accomplished through great and magnanimous sacrifices. The very foundations of the structure of government since raised rest upon splendid concessions for the common weal, made, it is true, under the stern pressure of war, but made from the noblest motives of patriotism. These concessions evince the progress which the people of the United States were then making towards both a national character and a national feeling. They show that, while there were causes which tended to keep the States apart, the formation of State constitutions, the conflicting interests growing out of the inequalities of these different communities, and the previous want of a national legislative power, there were still other causes at work, which tended to draw together the apparently discordant elements, and to create a union in which should be bound together, as one nation, the populations which had hitherto known only institutions of a local character. The time was indeed not come, when these latter tendencies could entirely overcome the former. It was not until the trials of peace had tested the strength and efficiency of a system formed under the trials of war,

when another and a severer conflict between national and local interests was to shake the republic to its centre, that a national government could be formed, adequate to all the exigencies of both. Still, the year 1781 saw the establishment of the Confederation, caused by the necessities of military

defence against an invading enemy. But it was accomplished only through the sacrifice of great claims; and the fact that it was accomplished, and that it led the way to our present Constitution, proves at once the wisdom and the patriotism of those who labored for it.

The great office of the Confederation, in our political history, will be a proper topic for consideration, after the analysis of its provisions. But we should not omit to observe here, that, when the union of the States was thus secured, the motives on which it was formed, and the concessions by which it was accompanied and followed, created a vast obstacle to any future dissolution. The immediate object of each State was to obtain its own independence of the crown of Great Britain, through the united, and therefore more powerful, action of all the States. But, in order to effect such a union, that immense territory, over which, in the language of Maryland, "free, convenient, and independent governments were afterwards to be formed, was to be ceded in advance, or to be impliedly promised to be ceded, to the use and benefit of the whole confederacy. confederacy of states, which had become possessed of such a common property, was thus bound together by an interest, the magnitude and force of which cannot now be easily estimated. The Union might incur fresh dangers of dissolution, after the war had ceased; its frame of government and its legislative power might prove wholly inadequate to the national wants in time of peace; the public faith might

A

be prostrated, and the national arm enfeebled; still, while the Confederacy stood as the great trustee of property large enough for the accommodation of an empire, a security existed against its total destruction. No State could withdraw from the Confederation, without forfeiting its interest in this grand public domain; and no human wisdom could devise a satisfactory distribution of property ceded as a common fund for the common benefit of sovereign States, without any fixed ratio of interest in the respective beneficiaries, and without any clear power in the government of the Confederation to deal with the trust itself.1

1 One of the great inducements to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States was to give the general government adequate constitutional power to dispose of the Western territory and to form new States out of it. Congress, under the Confederation, had no

express authority to do this, although they proceeded both to dispose of the lands and to erect new States, by the Ordinance of 1787. See The Federalist, No. 38, 42, 43. Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, III. 184 - 190, 1st edition.

CHAPTER VI.

.

NATURE AND POWERS OF THE CONFEDERATION.

THE nature of the government established by the Articles of Confederation can be understood only by an analysis of their provisions. For this purpose,

the instrument must here be examined with reference to three principal topics: first, the union which it established between the different members of the Confederacy; second, the form of the government which it created; and third, the powers which it conferred, or omitted to confer, upon that government.

I. The parties to this instrument were free, sovereign, and independent political communities, — each possessing within itself all the powers of legislation and government, over its own citizens, which any political society can possess. But, by this instrument, these several States became united together for certain purposes. The instrument was styled, "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States," and the political body thus formed was entitled "The United States of America." The Articles declared — as would, indeed, be implied, in such circumstances, without any express declaration —