the New World, remained unpaid. The taxes which were to meet these engagements did not flow into the public treasury. Agriculture was paralysed; trade declined; anarchy spread. Throughout the country, whether enlightened or ignorant, whether the blame was laid on the government or on the want of government, general dissatisfaction prevailed. In Europe the reputation of the United States was rapidly sinking. It was doubted whether the United States would ever exist at all. England fostered that distrust, by which she hoped to profit at some future day.

Great was the grief of Washington, agitated and humiliated was his heart, as if he had still been responsible for all that was occurring. " It is with the deepest and most heartfelt concern I perceive, by some late paragraphs extracted from the Boston papers, that the insurgents of Massachusetts, far from being satisfied with the redress offered by their General Court, are still acting in

open rebellion of law and government, and have obliged the chief magistrate, in a decided tone, to call upon the militia of the State to support the constitution. What, gracious God! is man, that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct? It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions under which we now live; constitutions of our own choice and making; and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them. The thing is so unaccountable, that I hardly know how to realise it, or to persuade myself that I am not under the illusion of a dream*."

"We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation. Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power. I do not conceive we can exist long

as a nation, without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States*."

"I think often of our situation and view it with concern. From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, is really mortifyingt."

"I feel infinitely more than I can express the disorders which have arisen in these States. Good God! who besides a Tory could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted them? * * * In regretting, which I have often done with the keenest sorrow, the death of our lamented friend General Greene, I have accompanied it of late with a query, whether he would not have preferred such an exit to the scenes, which, it is more than probable, many of his countrymen may live to bemoan ‡.

* Washington's Writings, vol. ix. p. 187.

+ Ibid. p. 167.

(Ibid. p. 225.

Nevertheless some hope, which the course of events and the growing good sense of the public justified, shone through the gloom of patriotic sorrow; a hope indeed fraught with toil and anxiety, the only hope which the radical imperfection of human concerns allows minds of a lofty order to cherish, but which suffices to support

their courage.

the remedy discerned.

Throughout the Confederation the evil was felt, The jealousies of the States, local interests, old habits and democratic prejudices, were extremely repugnant to make the sacrifices which a higher and stronger organisation of the central government must necessarily impose upon them. Nevertheless the spirit of order and of union, their love of the American country, their regret at seeing it lowered in the estimation of the world, their disgust at the interminable and unproductive minor agitations of anarchy, the obvious evils they were enduring, the knowledge of their

dangers, and all the correct notions and generous sentiments which filled the mind of Washington, were diffused abroad, gained credit amongst the people, and prepared a more auspicious future. Four years had scarcely elapsed since the conclusion of that peace by which the independence of the country was ratified, when a national Convention, summoned by the general feeling of the public, met at Philadelphia for the purpose of reforming the Federal Government.

The Convention opened on the 14th of May 1787, and on the same day Washington was elected President. From the 14th May to the 17th September, this assembly, sitting every day, with closed doors, and with the purest and most rational purposes which ever animated such an undertaking, drew up the Constitution which has now governed the United States of America for fifty years. On the 30th of April 1789, at the same instant at which the Constituent Assembly of France was