hanced the evil and foreboded anarchy; while each state had one vote, "great and very interesting questions" could be carried only by the concurrence of nine states. If the advice of Samuel Adams had been listened to, the vote of nine states would not have prevailed, unless they represented a majority of the people of all the states. For the transaction of less important business, an affirmative vote of seven states was required. In other words, in the one case the assent of two thirds of all the states, in the other of a majority of them all, was needed, the absence of any state having the force of a negative vote.

The king's right to levy taxes in the colonies by parliament or by his prerogative had been denied, and no more than a power to make requisitions had been conceded: in like manner it was assumed as a fundamental article that the United States in congress assembled shall never impose or levy any tax or duties, but only make requisitions for money on the several states; and this restriction, such was the force of usage, was accepted without remark. No one explained the distinction between a superior power 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 king might establish a general post-office, it had been held, for public convenience, not for a purpose of revenue: in like manner congress might authorize rates of postage to defray the expense of transporting the mails. The colonies under the king had severally levied import and export duties; the same power was reserved to each separate state, to be limited only by the proposed treaties with France and Spain.

The new republic was left without any independent revenue, and the charges of the government, its issues of paper money, its loans, were to be ultimately defrayed through requisitions for the quotas assessed upon the separate states. The difference between the North and the South growing out of the institution of slavery decided the rule for the distribution of these quotas. By the draft of Dickinson, taxation was

to be in proportion to the census of population, in which slaves were to be enumerated. On the thirteenth of October 1777, it was moved that the sum to be paid by each state into the treasury should be ascertained by the value of all property within each state. This was promptly negatived, and was followed by a motion having for its object to exempt slaves from taxation altogether. On the following day eleven states were present. The four of New England voted in the negative; Maryland, Virginia, and the two Carolinas in the affirmative. Robert Morris of Pennsylvania against Roberdeau, and Duer of New York against Duane, voted with the South, and so the votes of their states were divided and lost. The decision rested on New Jersey, and she gave it for the complete exemption from taxation of all property in slaves. This is the first important division between slaveholding states and the states where slavery was of little account. The rule for apportioning the revenue, as finally adopted, was the respective value of land granted or surveyed, and the buildings and improvements thereon, without regard to personal property or numbers. This rendered the confederacy nugatory; for congress had not power to make the valuation.

In like manner the rules for navigation were to be established exclusively by each separate state, and the confederation did not take to itself power to countervail the restrictions of foreign governments, or to form agreements of reciprocity, or even to establish uniformity. These arrangements suited the opinions of the time; the legislature of New Jersey, vexed by the control of New York over the waters of New York bay, alone proposed as an amendment a grant of greater power over foreign commerce. Moreover, each state decided for itself what imports it would permit and what it would prohibit. As a consequence, the confederate congress was left without power to sanction or to stop the slave-trade.

The king had possessed all land not alienated by royal grants. On the declaration of independence, the royal quitrents ceased to be paid; and each state assumed the ownership of the royal domain within its limits. The validity of the act of parliament which transferred the region north-west of the Ohio to the province of Quebec was denied by all; but

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the states which by their charters extended indefinitely west, or west and north-west, refused to accept the United States as the umpire to settle their boundaries, except with regard to each other.

Jealousy of a standing army and the superiority of the civil over the military power were among the dearest traditions of English liberty. It was borne in mind that victorious legions revolutionized Rome; that Charles I. sought to overturn the institutions of England by an army; that by an army Charles II. was brought back without conditions; that by a standing army, which Americans themselves were to have been taxed to maintain, it had been proposed to abridge American liberties. In congress this distrust of military power existed all the more for the confidence and undivided affection which the people bore to the American commander-in-chief, and has for its excuse that human nature was hardly supposed able to furnish an example of a military liberator of his country, desirous after finishing his work to go into private life. We have seen how earnestly Washington endeavored to establish an army of the United States. His plan, which, at the time it was proposed, congress did not venture to reject, was now deliberately demolished. To prevent a homogeneous organization, it not only left to each of them the exclusive power over its militia, but the exclusive appointment of the regimental officers in its quota of land forces for the general service.

As in England, so in America, this jealousy did not extend to maritime affairs; the separate states had no share in the appointment of officers in the navy.

As the king in England, so the United States determined on peace and war, sent ambassadors to foreign powers, and entered into treaties and alliances; but, beside their general want of executive power, the grant to make treaties of commerce was limited by the power reserved to the states over imports and exports, over shipping and revenue.

The right of coining money, the right of keeping up shipsof-war, land forces, forts, and garrisons, were shared by congress with the respective states. No state, Massachusetts not more than South Carolina, would subordinate its law of treason to the will of congress. The formation of a class of national

statesmen was impeded by the clause which forbade any man to sit in congress more than three years out of six; nor could the same member of congress be appointed its president more than one year in any term of three years. No executive 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 scarcely the rudiment of a judiciary from which a court for executing the ordinances of congress could be developed. Congress was incapable of effectual supervision over officers. of its own appointment and in its own service. The report of Dickinson provided for a council; but this was narrowed down to "a committee of states," to be composed of one delegate from each state, with no power whatever respecting important business, and no power of any kind except that with which congress, "by the consent of nine states," might invest them from time to time.

Each state retained its sovereignty, and all power not expressly delegated. Under the king of England, the use of the veto in colonial legislation had been complained of. There was not even a thought of vesting congress with a veto on the legislation of states, or subjecting such legislation to the revision of a judicial tribunal. Each state, being esteemed independent and sovereign, had exclusive, full, and final powers in every matter relating to domestic police and government, to slavery and manumission, to the conditions of the elective franchise; and the restraints required to secure loyalty to the central government were left to be self-imposed. Incidental powers to carry into effect the powers granted to the United States were withheld.

To complete the security against central authority, the articles of confederation were not to be adopted except by the assent of every one of the legislatures of the thirteen separate states; and no amendment might be made without an equal unanimity. A government which had not power to levy a tax, or raise a soldier, or deal directly with an individual, or keep its engagements with foreign powers, or amend its

constitution without the unanimous consent of its members, had not enough of vital force to keep itself alive. But a higher spirit moved over the darkness of that formless void. Notwithstanding the defects of the confederation, the congress of the United States, inspired by the highest wisdom of the eighteenth century, and seemingly without debate, imbodied in their work four capital results, which Providence in its love for the human race could not let die.

The republics of Greece and Rome had been essentially no more than governments of cities. When Rome exchanged the narrowness of the ancient municipality for cosmopolitan expansion, the republic, from the false principle on which it was organized, became an empire. The middle ages had free towns and cantons, but no national republic. Congress had faith that one republican government could comprehend a continental territory, even though it should extend from the Gulf of Mexico to the uttermost limit of Canada and the eastern limit of Newfoundland.

Having thus proclaimed that a republic may equal the widest empire in its bounds, the relation of the United States to the natural rights of their inhabitants was settled with superior wisdom. Some of the states had, each according to its prevailing superstition or prejudice, narrowed the rights of classes of men. One state disfranchised Jews, another Catholics, another deniers of the Trinity, another men of a complexion different from white. The United States in congress assembled, suffering the errors in one state to eliminate the errors in another, rejected every disfranchisement and superadded none. The declaration of independence said, all men are created equal; by the articles of confederation and perpetual union, free inhabitants were free citizens.

That which gave reality to the union was the article which secured to "the free inhabitants" of each of the states "all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states." Congress appeared to shun the term "people of the United States." It is nowhere found in their articles of confederation, and rarely and only accidentally in their votes; yet by this act they constituted the free inhabitants of the different states one people. When the articles of confederation reached South