fact. We have seen the American people, divided into separate and isolated communities, without nationality, except such as resulted from a general community of origin, — undertaking together the work of throwing off the domination of their parent state. We have seen them enter upon this undertaking without forming any political bond of a national character, and without instituting any proper national agency. We have seen, that the first government which they created was, practically, a mere general council for the recommendation of measures to be adopted and executed by the several constituencies represented. We have seen no machinery instituted for the accomplishment, by the combined authority of these separate communities, of the great objects at which they were aiming; and although in theory the Revolutionary Congress would have been entitled to assume and exercise the powers necessary to accomplish the objects for which it was assembled, we have seen that the people of the country, from a jealous and unreasonable fear of all power, would not permit this to be done.

The consequences of this want of power were inevitable. An army could not be kept in the field, on a permanent footing, capable of holding the enemy in check. The city of New York fell into the hands of that enemy, the intermediate country between that city and the city of Philadelphia was overrun, and from the latter capital, the seat of the general government, the Congress was obliged to fly before the invading foe.

Taught by these events that a more effective union was necessary to the deliverance of the country from a foreign yoke, the States at length united in the establishment of a government, the leading purpose of which was mutual defence against external attacks, and called it a Confederation. But its powers were so restricted, and its operations so clogged and impeded by State jealousies and State reservations of power, that it lacked entirely the means of providing the sinews of war out of the resources of the country, and was driven to foreign loans and foreign arms for the means of bringing that war to a close. A vast load of debt was thus accumulated upon the country; and, as soon as peace was established, it became apparent, that, while the Confederation was a government with the power of contracting debts, it was without the power of paying them. This incapacity revealed the existence of great objects of government, without which the people of the several States could never prosper, and which, in their separate capacities, the States themselves could never accomplish.

Now it is as certain as history can make any thing, that the whole period, from the commencement of the war to the end of the Confederation, was a period of great suffering to the people of the United States. The trials and hardships of war were succeeded by the greater trials and hardships of a time of peace, in which the whole nation experienced that greatest of all social evils, the want of an efficient and competent government. There was a gloom

upon the minds of men, a sense of insecurity, — a consciousness that American society was not fulfilling the ends of its being by the development of its resources and the discharge of its obligations, — which constituted altogether a discipline and a chastisement of the whole nation, and which we are not at liberty to regard as the mere accidents of a world ungoverned by an overruling Power.

It was from the midst of that discipline that the American people came to the high undertaking of forming for themselves a constitution, by which to work out the destiny of social life in this Western World. Had they essayed their task after years of prosperity, and after old institutions and old forms of government had, upon the whole, yielded a fair amount of success and happiness, they would have wanted that power which comes only from failure and disappointment, - the power to adapt the best remedy to the deepest social defects, and to lay hold on the future with the strength given by the hard teachings of the past.

Civil liberty, American liberty, that liberty

which resides in law, which is protected by great institutions and upheld by the machinery of a popular government, is not simply the product of a desire, or a determination, to be free. Such liberty comes, if it comes at all, only after serious mistakes, after frightful deficiencies have taught men that power must be lodged somewhere. It comes when a people have learned, by adversity and disappointment, that a total negation of all authority, and a jealousy of all

restraint, can end only in leaving society without the defences and securities which nothing but law can raise for it. It comes when the passions are exhausted, and the rivalries of opposing interests have worn themselves out, in the vain endeavor to reach what reason and justice and self-sacrifice alone can procure. Then, and then only, is the intellect of a nation sure to operate with the fidelity and energy of its native power. Then only does it grasp the principles of freedom with the ability to incorporate them into the practical forms of a public administration whose strength and energy shall give them vitality, and prevent their diffusion into the vagueness of mere abstractions, which return to society the cold and mocking gift of a stone for its craving demand of bread.

The Convention was a body of great and disinterested men, competent, both morally and intellectually to the work assigned them. High qualities of character are requisite to the formation of a system of government for a wide country with different interests. Mere talent will not do it. Intellectual power and ingenuity alone cannot compass it.

There must be a moral completeness in the characters of those who are to achieve such a work; for it does not consist solely in devising schemes, or creating offices, or parcelling out jurisdictions and powers. There must be adaptation, adjustment of conflicting interests, reconciliation of conflicting claims. There must be the recognition and admission of great expe

dients, and the sacrifice, often, of darling objects of ambition, or of local policy, to the vast central purpose of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Hence it is, that, wherever this mighty work is to be successfully accomplished, there must be a high sense of justice; a power of concession; the qualities of magnanimity and patriotism; and that broad moral sanity of the intellect, which is farthest removed from fanaticism, intolerance, or selfish adhesion either to interest or to opinion.

These qualities were preeminently displayed by many of the framers of the Constitution. There was certainly a remarkable amount of talent and intellectual power in that body. There were men in that assembly, whom, for genius in statesmanship, and for profound speculation in all that relates to the science of government, the world has never seen overmatched.

But the same men, who were most conspicuous for these brilliant gifts and acquirements, for their profound theories and their acute perception of principles, were happily the most marked, in that assembly, for their comprehensive patriotism, their justice, their unselfishness and magnanimity. Take, for instance, Hamilton. Where, among all the speculative philosophers in political science whom the world has seen, shall we find a man of greater acuteness of intellect, or more capable of devising a scheme of government which should appear theoretically perfect? Yet Hamilton's unquestionable genius for political disquisition and construction was directed and restrained by a noble generosity, and an unerr