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CHAP. a regular cartel for exchange of prisoners, yet I doubt not but your own discretion will suggest to July. you the means of effecting such exchange without the king's dignity and honor being committed, or his majesty's name being used in any negotiation for that purpose." The secretary's letter was received in May at Halifax, and was followed by the proposal in July to give up a citizen carried away from Boston for a British subject held in arrest. Congress, on the twenty-second, voted its approval; and further empowered its commanders in each department to exchange prisoners of war: officer for officer of equal rank, soldier for soldier, sailor for sailor, and citizen for citizen. In this arrangement Howe readily concurred; the choice of prisoners was to be made by the respective commanders for their own officers and men. On the part of the United States the system was a public act of the highest authority; on that of the British government it had no more enduring sanction than the good-will of the British general, and did not even bind his successor. Interrupted by frequent altercations, it nevertheless prevailed during the war, and extended to captive privateers when they es caped impressment.

Union was the need of America. The draught of confederation which, on the twelfth of July, was brought into congress, was in the handwriting of Dickinson, and had been begun before the end of June. The Farmer of Pennsylvania, like the statue of the fabled child of the morning twilight, welcomed the coming sun with music, but stood silent and motionless during the heat of the day. He

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was not to be found when the militia regiment of CHAP. which he was colonel began its march. He followed it on horseback as far as Trenton; but his 1776. nerves were so much shattered that, after resting there a day, he finished his journey to Elizabethtown in a carriage. He had been but ten days in camp, when at the new election the Pennsylvania convention superseded him as a delegate to congress. Stung to the quick by the slight, he professed to speak of it with rapture; and then he would liken the patriots who had opposed him to tory traitors. He called on virtue to be his comforter, and pictured to his mind the beauty of dying for the defence and happiness of his unkind countrymen. But with all his parade of exposing his life to every hazard, and lodging within half a mile of hostile troops, he never took part in hard fighting, and making an excuse about rank, he left the army in the moment of his country's greatest danger.

The main hindrance to a strong confederation was the innate unwillingness of the separate states to give up power, combined with a jealousy of establishing it in other hands than their own. The public mind is of slow growth, and had not yet attained the wisdom necessary for regenerating its government. The Dutch and Swiss confederacies were the only models known to the people with detail and precision. There was not in congress one single statesman who fully comprehended the want of the country; but Dickinson, from his timidity, his nice refining, his want of mastery over his erudition, his hostility to independence, his in

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CHAP. consolable grief at the overthrow of the proprietary II. government in Pennsylvania by the action of conJuly. gress, was peculiarly unfit to be the architect of a permanent national constitution; and in his zeal to guard against the future predominance of congress, he exaggerated the imperfections, which had their deep root in the history of the states.

For more than a century, and even from the foundation of the settlements, almost every English administration had studied to acquire the disposal of their military resources and their revenues, while every American legislature had had for its constant object the repression of the encroachments of the crown. This antagonism, developed and confirmed by successive generations, had become the quick instinct and fixed habit of the people. All their patriotic traditions clustered round the story of their untiring resistance to the establishment of an overruling central force, and strengthened the conviction of the inherent deadly hostility of such a force to their vital principle of self-direction. Each one of the colonies connected its idea of freedom and safety with the exclusive privilege of managing its internal policy; and they delighted to keep fresh the proud memories of repeated victories won over the persistent attempt of the agents of a supreme power, which was external to themselves, to impose restrictions on their domestic autonomy.

This jealousy of control from without concentred on the subject of taxation. In raising a revenue the colonies acknowledged in the king no function whatever except that of addressing to

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them severally a requisition; it was the great prin- CHAP. ciple of their politics that to them alone belonged the discretion to grant and collect aids by their 1776. own separate acts. The confederacy now stood in the place of the crown as the central authority, and to that federal union the colonies, by general concurrence, proposed to confide only the same limited right. It was laid down as a fundamental article, that "the United States assembled shall never impose or levy any tax or duties," except for postage; and this restriction, such was the force of habit, was accepted without remark. No one explained the distinction between a sovereignty wielded by an hereditary king in another hemisphere, and a superior power which should be the chosen expression of the will and reason of the nation. The country had broken with the past in declaring independence; it went back into bondage to the past in forming its first constitution.

The withholding from the United States of the direct authority to raise a revenue was not peculiar to Dickinson; in all other respects his plan was less efficient than that proposed the year before. Experience had shown that colonies often failed to be represented: Franklin's plan constituted one half of the members of congress a quorum, and left the decision of every question to the majority of those who might be present; Dickinson knew only "the United States assembled;" counted every one of them which might chance to be unrepresented as a vote in the negative; required that not even a trivial matter should be determined except by the concurrence of seven colonies; and that meas

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CHAP. ures of primary importance should await the assent of nine, that is of two thirds of the whole. If eight states only were present, no question relating to defence, peace, war, finances, army, or navy could be transacted even by a unanimous vote; nor could a matter of smaller moment be settled by a majority of six to two. By common consent congress was the channel through which amendments to the constitution were to be proposed: Franklin accepted all amendments that should be approved by a majority of the state assemblies; Dickinson permitted no change but by the consent of the legislature of every state. No executive apparatus distinct from the general congress could be detected in the system. Judicial power over questions arising between the states was provided for; and courts might be established to exercise primary jurisdiction over crimes committed on the high seas, with appellate jurisdiction over captures; but there was not even a rudimentary organ from which a court for executing the ordinances of the confederacy could be developed; and as a consequence there existed no real legislative authority. The congress could transact specific business, but not enact general laws; could publish a journal, but not a book of statutes.

Even this anarchical scheme, which was but the reflection of the long-cherished repugnance to central power, a reminiscence of the war-cries of former times, not a creation for the coming age, alarmed Edward Rutledge, who served with industry on the committee with Dickinson. He saw danger in the very thought of an indissoluble league of friendship between the states for their general welfare;