64 CHAPTER V. THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. "Look around the habitable world-how few -Franklin. THE book called "The Constitution," published by Rev. W. Hickey, 1846, and of which a large edition was purchased by Congress for free distribution, uses the following language in reference to the Articles of Confederation:-"The confederation having given place to the American Union under the Constitution of the United States, it was considered unnecessary to insert, in the first and second editions of this book, the Articles of Confederation; but on further consideration these articles have been inserted at page 471 merely as a matter of history, as it were out of place to mingle that inefficient form of government with the present approved and successful system, which has stood the test of more than half a century, and which is destined, under Divine Providence, not only to perpetuate the happiness and safety of the people of the United States, but to be the Great Exemplar of Nations." We quote this passage, italics, capital letters, and all, to show how flippantly a certain class of partisans can hustle down the wind an instrument adopted by the revolutionary Congress, because it was framed upon a constitutional principle which the author dislikes but does not understand. We learn also how thoughtlessly such persons can eulogize another state paper when it stands in the zenith of popularity. This sort of condemnation and praise proves only the poverty of mind of the writers; for it never occurs to them to look to anything but the parchmentform as the cause of national glory or decay. That the Articles of Confederation were innocent, of the "inefficiency of government" between 1778-87, ought by this time to be clear to even the dullest understandings. That state paper was at least consistent with the theory on which it was framed; and if that theory was inconsistent with the political practices of the then American society, it was not the fault of those who drafted the articles, but of the people and their state governments, who would not follow them. All the inconsistency there was, arose from the fact that they put ideas of government on paper, while the public mind moved in very different grooves. The American people have never yet been great enough to be a federal people, though true federalism is the true theory of government for them. We would ask those, that are so ready to condemn the articles, to tell us whether any fundamental law written then could have been lasting. Let them reflect on the fact that society was then under constant and rapid transformations, and they must see, that such a society could not be either the mother or bearer or conductor of positive-stringent-political institutions. The articles were ephemeral, not from any intrinsic fault of theirs; but for the reason that they had no matured foundation in the popular mind. Every state constitution, then made, has had to be altered, because the change made from royal to republican institutions, necessitated not only new bases for political reasoning, but also new political manners. And beside all this, it was a society, whose members were engaged in a hurdlerace for landed possessions to sell again at a profit; and in it there were not, and could not be, any classes that had either the time or the interest to meditate on and to perfect political institutions that should perpetuate their rights and interests by adding political power to their social forces. The population wanted simply freedom in its hot pursuit after wealth; and it was not an accident, but an inevitable incident, that the first great public issue under the articles was the land question, and that it had to be settled, extraneously of the articles, by the abnormal ordinance of 1787. To us it seems clear, therefore, that the present constitution would have passed away just as the articles did, if it had been adopted between 1776 and 1783. There being no settled society, how could there be permanent governments? The public mind could pile constitutions upon constitutions, just as mother-earth, when in volcanic action, piles lava upon lava. This tendency to frame fundamental laws, when the foundation for them was wanting, aggravated all social and political difficulties. Thus society had to reverse the true order of things, and work out social problems under the brakes of political theories and political functions, amidst the incessant importunities and accelerations of social covetings. The articles meant a government resting on a well-matured but prompt and persistent public will in the discharge of public obligations, such, for instance, as the payment of public debts and the E interest thereon, while the public mind wanted a government slow in that regard, but brisk in all things that brought riches to the masses. In short, the articles and the people were not agreed, and the same want of accord has ever perplexed American politics. Government was accordingly inefficient under the articles, not, because they embodied an imperfect federal law, but because society was inconsistent with the integrity they required. The fact was, the public mind equivocated between its real desires and its patriotic professions. A federal union, eternal amity between the states and their peoples, the preservation of the public credit, and honest taxation, was on everybody's lips; but in the hearts were the wishes for a government, that would furnish them facilities in the pursuit of riches, and allow free play to the jealousy as to each other's advancement. The love of fluctuating paper money, unfair taxation and injustice, as to the relations of debtor and creditor, lurked beneath all patriotic pretences. Lip-politics were written down in the articles, while the actualities outside of them really governed the people. One or the other had to give way, and, of course, it fell to the articles to do so. But it would be now, as it was then, a fatal illusion to think, that the conflict between public theories and the public practices ended when the Constitution of 1787 was adopted. No! we shall see in subsequent chapters that it took only new and acuter forms; because it has ever pleased our people to cover their actual political and social conditions with fine public institutions, and to pretend to a tranquillity, which it did not and could not have as a fact. It was so as to the articles. It took some ten years to perfect them; and when they were finally adopted, the union sentiment, that was fresh and sincere in 1773 under the necessities of the impending armed struggle with the military forces of Great Britain, had become stale and hollow. And when it was to be brought to the higher heat, that was needed to create a government over themselves, and to enforce a public will, that was to curb their own passions, it required refreshings through the country's great men. Permanent political organization comes through social interests that need stability, and it is always a mistake to seek to use forms of organization that were improvised for overthrowing a government that was established by the old forces of a society, as the institutions of a people for their permanent organisms. They will ever prove unsuitable to the new state. That error was universal at the end of the last century, and the articles were, as a failure, but first in time. They have had very numerous successors since in every country, perhaps least in Great Britain, because it adhered to its unwritten constitution, and had for that reason more political flexibility. The English have also a faculty of self-deception, which aids them much in reconciling public opinion to changes, viz.: they call the old new, and the new old. Let the reader reflect on the numerous constitutions since framed, in France and elsewhere, in the heat of political agitations, and he will realize, that working up a people to the fervor necessary for throwing off false government is one task, and that the production of a tranquil public mind, such as is needed to call for and to submit to a future permanent rule, is quite another. America had an early example on this point in the union of 1643 between the colonies of New England; it was declared to be "a firm and perpetual compact of amity for mutual protection, defensive and offensive, for counsel, and in all just causes, to secure and spread the truth and liberties of the Gospel, and for mutual security and welfare." But the professed objects, permanent as they were, covered only a temporary actual purpose, that of fighting the Indians; and when that had passed away, other social and political reasons reassumed their importance and dissolved the union compact. The attempt to organize a general North American Union in 1754 fell dead-born, because neither the colonies, nor their people, nor their rulers, were sincere. It is interesting to note, amidst so much public prevarication, the private, or rather, let us say, the individual labors of Franklin and Washington, and especially the circular letter of the latter to the governors of all the states on the dismissal of the army, June 8, 1783. His four cardinal points were— (1.) "An indissoluble union of the states under a supreme federal authority. (2.) "A strict observance of public justice. (3.) "Appropriate military institutions during peace. (4) "A peaceable friendly disposition of all inhabitants of the United States towards each other, and it so marked, that the narrowing prejudices may be abandoned, and that, not thinking of their own special interests, they may concede to each other all that furthers their common welfare, and always ready to sacrifice their own advantage, if the prosperity of the whole requires it." That spirit was no doubt in the minds of those that framed the articles. Faith in it made them call it a "perpetual union," and gave them the fond hope that it would endure for ever. But was the public mind, or of even that of the prominent state politicians, filled with such aspirations? We all know that this was not the case, and there, not in the articles themselves, was the cause of the short-timed life of that instrument. It was indeed an imperfect government; what written constitution was ever otherwise? But it contained the very perfectibility which, if society had had the right temper, would have been used for the very constant improvement, that alone could make it as perfect as it could and ought to be. Throwing them aside altogether, as was done in 1787, was hardly consistent with the pains taken to get them adopted. The gravest error of the articles was the want of an efficient chief executive; but was not this deficiency caused by the antiking feeling of the time? What American constitution has not the same defect? Are we not still cowards before royal shadows? Who of us, then, may blame public men, that had been engaged for years in setting a wrong kingship aside, for not realizing the fact that their first duty after securing this end was to institute a rightful and effective chief magistrature? It was also a mistake to follow Franklin's hobby and to have only one legislative body; but who was then free of the folly that accepted the law-making power as the only branch of government that was safe in itself, and needed only powers and no restraints? There was also in the articles too much doctrinal state sovereignty, and too little of that ethical sovereignty which is a sovereignty bound to evolve state righteousness. The fiscal arrangements were particularly lame; but has not the entire history of congressional taxation since justified the extreme caution of these provisions? If now, however, we come to the positive virtues of the instrument, we must see how broad and sound a foundation it had in principle. Article IV. contains a national citizenship, free from the ancient narrowness of clannish burgherism, but free also from a too loose naturalization. Free state citizenship is the standard measure for all privileges and immunities which the inhabitants of each of the United States are to enjoy while sojourning in the sister states; and surely every person understanding federal law must admit that this is the correcter principle, and that the provision of the present constitution is illogical with itself. This Article IV. was written by Mr. Dickinson, who had himself been an emigrant from Pennsylvania to Delaware; and he had experienced in himself not only the value of independence, from a disagreeable general state sovereignty, but also that of economic freedom in local administration. And he confined for that reason the rights of sojourners from other |