smaller proportion. Sometimes it borrowed money from Holland or France, but often its only resource was to issue paper promises to pay, or the so-called Continental paper money. There were no federal courts,1 nor marshals to execute federal decrees. Congress might issue orders, but it had no means of compelling obedience.

fully en

The Continental Congress was therefore not in the full sense a sovereign body. A government is not really a government until it can impose taxes and thus command the money needful for keeping it It was not in existence. Nevertheless the Congress ex- dowed with ercised some of the most indisputable func- Bovereignty. tions of sovereignty. "It declared the independence of the United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it borrowed large sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood to be the national credit for their repayment; it issued an inconvertible paper currency, granted letters of marque, and built a navy." 2 Finally it ratified a treaty of peace with Great Britain. So that the Congress was really, in many respects, and in the eyes of the world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued exercise of such powers was not compatible with the absence of the power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of throwing off the sovereignty of Great Britain, the people of these states were constructing a federal union faster than they realized. Their theory of the

1 Except the "Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture," for an admirable account of which see Jameson's Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, pp. 1-45.

2 Critical Period, p. 93.

situation did not keep pace with the facts, and their first attempt to embody their theory, in the Articles of Confederation, was not unnaturally a failure.

At first the powers of the Congress were vague. They were what are called "implied war powers; that is to say, the Congress had a war with Great Britain on its hands, and must be supposed to have power to do whatever was necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. At first, too, when it had only begun to issue paper money, there was a momentary feeling of prosperity. Military success added to its appearance of strength, and the reputation of the Congress reached its highwater mark early in 1778, after the capture of Burgoyne's army and the making of the alliance with France. After that time, with the weary prolonging of the war, the increase of the public debt, and the collapse of the paper currency, its reputation steadily declined. There was also much work to be done in reorganizing the state governments, and this kept at home in the state legislatures many of the ablest men who would otherwise have been sent to the Congress. Thus in point of intellectual capacity the latter body was distinctly inferior in 1783 to what it had been when first assembled nine years earlier.

Decline of the Continental Congress.

The arrival of peace did not help the Congress, but made matters worse. When the absolute necessity of presenting a united front to the common enemy was removed, the weakness of the union was shown in many ways that were alarming. The sentiment of union was weak. In spite of the community in language and institutions, which was so favourable to union, the people of the several states had many local prejudices which tended to destroy the union in its infancy. A man was quicker to remember that he was

a New Yorker or a Massachusetts man than that he was an American and a citizen of the United States. Neighbouring states levied custom-house duties against one another, or refused to admit into their Anarchical markets each other's produce, or had quar- tendencies. rels about boundaries which went to the verge of war. Things grew worse every year until by the autumn of 1786, when the Congress was quite bankrupt and most of the states nearly so, when threats of secession were heard both in New England and in the South, when there were riots in several states and Massachusetts was engaged in suppressing armed rebellion, when people in Europe were beginning to ask whether we were more likely to be seized upon by France or reconquered piecemeal by Great Britain, it came to be thought necessary to make some kind of a change.

Men were most unwillingly brought to this conclusion, because they were used to their state assemblies and not afraid of them, but they were afraid of increasing the powers of any government superior to the states, lest they should thus create an unmanageable tyranny. They believed that even anarchy, though a dreadful evil, is not so dreadful as despotism, and for this view there is much to be said. After no end of trouble a convention was at length got together at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and after four months of work with closed doors, it was able to offer The Federal to the country the new Federal Constitution. Convention Both in its character and in the work which it did, this Federal Convention, over which Washington presided, and of which Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton were members, was one of the most remarkable deliberative bodies known to history.

(1787).

We have seen that the fundamental weakness of the Continental Congress lay in the fact that it could

not tax the people. Hence although it could for a time exert other high functions of sovereignty, it could only do so while money was supplied to it from other sources than taxation; from contributions made by the states in answer to its "requisitions," from foreign loans, and from a paper currency. But such resources could not last long. It was like a man's trying to live upon his own promissory notes and upon gifts and unsecured loans from his friends. When the supply of money was exhausted, the Congress soon found that it could no longer comport itself as a sovereign power; it could not preserve order at home, and the situation abroad may be illustrated by the fact that George III. kept garrisons in several of our northwestern frontier towns and would not send a minister to the United States. This example shows that, among the sovereign powers of a government, the power of taxation is the fundamental one upon which all the others depend. Nothing can go on without money.

But the people of the several states would never consent to grant the power of taxation to such a body as the Continental Congress, in which they were not represented. The Congress was not a legislature, but a diplomatic body; it did not represent the people, but the state governments; and a large state like Pennsylvania had no more weight in it than a little state like Delaware. If there was to be any central assembly for the whole union, endowed with the power of taxation, it must be an assembly representing the American people just as the assembly of a single state represented the people of the state.

As soon as this point became clear, it was seen to be necessary to throw the Articles of Confederation overboard, and construct a new national government. As was said above, our Federal Congress is not de

scended from the Continental Congress. Its parentage is to be sought in the state legislatures. Our federal government was constructed after the general model of the state governments, with some points copied from British usages, and some points that were original and new.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What are the reasons for reserving the Constitution of the United States for the concluding chapter?

2. Circumstances that favoured union of the colonies:

a. The origin of their inhabitants.

b. All the details of their civil government.

c. The ease with which they understood one another.

d. Their common dangers, two in particular.

3. Earlier unions among the colonies: —

a. The New England Confederacy, its time, purpose, and

duration.

b. The French danger, and plans to meet it.

c. The Albany Congress,

d. The Stamp Act Congress.

its nature and immediate

purpose.

4. Committees of correspondence : —

a. The circular letter of Massachusetts in 1768.

b. Town committees of correspondence in Massachusetts in

1772.

c. Colonial committees of correspondence in 1773.

d. The habit established through these committees.

5. The Continental Congress : —

a. The immediate causes that led to it.

b. How it might have been temporary.

c. How it became permanent.

d. Its date, place of meeting, and duration.

e. Why "continental" as distinguished from "provincial ?"

f. The nature and extent of its authority.

g. The states represented in it never fully sovereign.

6. Give an account of the "Articles of Confederation."

7. Distinguish between the Continental Congress and the Federal.

8. The powers of the Continental Congress :

a. Its homelessness and wandering.

b. Its delegates and their voting power.