CHAPTER IX.

1781-1783.

OPINIONS AND EFFORTS OF WASHINGTON AND OF HAMILTON.-DECLINE OF THE CONFEDERATION.

THE proposal of the revenue system went forth to the country, although not in immediate connection, yet nearly at the same time, with those comprehensive and weighty counsels which Washington addressed to the states, when the great object for which he had entered the service of his country had been accomplished, and he was about to return to a private station. His relations to the people of this country had been peculiar. He had been, not only the leader of their armies, but, in a great degree, their civil counsellor; for although he had rarely, if ever, gone out of the province of his command to give shape or direction to constitutional changes, yet the whole circumstances of that command had constantly placed him in contact with the governments of the states, as well as with the Congress; and he had often been obliged to interpose the influence of his own character and opinions with all of them, in order that the civil machine might not wholly cease to move. At the moment when he was about to lay aside the sword, he saw very clearly that there were certain principles of conduct which must be called into action in the states, and among the people of the states, for the preservation of the Union. He, and he alone, could address to them with effect the requisite words of admonition, and point out the course of safety and success. This great service, the last act of his revolutionary official life, was performed with all the truth and wisdom of his character, before he proceeded to resign into the hands of Congress the power which he had held so long, and which he now surrendered with a virtue, a dignity, and a sincerity with which no such power has ever been laid down by any of the leaders of revolutions whom the world has seen.

His object in this address was not so much to urge the adoption of particular measures, as to inculcate principles which he believed to be essential to the welfare of the country. So clearly, however, did it appear to him that the honor and independence of the country were involved in the adoption of the revenue system which Congress had recommended, that he did not refrain from urging it as the sole means by which a national bankruptcy could be averted, before any different plan could be proposed and adopted.

But how far, at this time, any other or further plans for the formation of a better constitution had been formed, or how far any one perceived both the vicious principle of the Confederation and the means of substituting for it another and more efficient power, we can judge only by the published writings of the Revolutionary statesmen. It is quite certain that at this period Washington saw the defects of the Confederation, as he had seen them clearly, and suffered under them, from the beginning. He saw that in the powers of the states, which far exceeded those of the Continental Congress, lay the source of all the perplexities which he had experienced in the course of the war, and of almost the whole of the difficulties and distresses of the army; and that to form a new constitution, which would give consistency, stability, and dignity to the Union, was the great problem of the time. He saw, also, that the honor and true interest of this country were involved in the development of continental power; that local and state politics were destined to interfere with the establishment of any more liberal and extensive plan of government, which the circumstances of the country required, as they had perpetually weakened the bond by which the Union had thus far been held together; and that such local influences would make these states the sport of European policy. He predicted, moreover, that the country would reach, if it reached at all, some system of sufficient capabilities, only through mistakes and disasters, and through an experience purchased at the price of further difficulties and distress. Such were his general views at the close of the war.1

1 Letter to Hamilton, March 31, 1783. Writings, VIII. 409. Letter to Lafayette, April 5, 1783. Ibid. 411. Address to the States, June 5, 1783. Ibid. 439.

But there was one man in the country who had looked more deeply still into its wants, and who had formed in his enlarged and comprehensive mind the clearest view of the means necessary to meet them, even before the Confederation had been practically tried. A reorganization of the government had engaged the attention of Hamilton as early as 1780; and, with his characteristic penetration and power, he saw and suggested what should be the remedy.

He entertained the opinion at this time, as he had always entertained it, that the discretionary powers originally vested in Congress for the safety of the states, and implied in the circumstances and objects of their assembling, were fully competent to the public exigencies. But their practice, from the time of the Declaration of Independence through all the period that preceded the establishment of the Confederation, had accustomed the country to doubts of their original authority, and had at last amounted to a surrender of the ground from which they might have exercised it. No remedy, therefore, remained applicable to the circumstances, and capable of rescuing the affairs of the country from their deplorable situation, but to vest in Congress, expressly and by a direct grant, the powers necessary to constitute an efficient government and a solid, coercive union. The project then before the country, in the Articles of Confederation, had been designed to accomplish what the revolutionary government had failed to do. But it was manifestly destined to fail in its turn; for it left an uncontrollable sovereignty in the states, capable of defeating the beneficial exercise of the very powers which it undertook to confer upon Congress. It made the army, not a unit, formed and organized by a central and supreme authority, and looking up to that authority alone, but a collection of several armies, raised by the several states. It gave to the state legislatures the effective power of the purse by withholding all certain revenues from Congress. It proposed to introduce no method and energy of administration; and, without an executive, it left every detail of government to be managed by a deliberative body, whose constitution rendered it fit for none but legislative functions.

Under these circumstances, it was Hamilton's advice, before the Confederation took effect, that Congress should plainly, frankly, and unanimously confess to the states their inability to carry on

the contest with Great Britain without more ample powers than those which they had for some time exercised, or those which they could exercise under the Confederation; and that a convention of all the states be immediately assembled, with full authority to agree upon a different system. He suggested that a complete sovereignty should be vested in Congress, except as to that part of internal police which relates to the rights of property and life among individuals, and to raising money by internal taxes, which he admitted should be regulated by the state legislatures. But in all that relates to war, peace, trade, and finance he maintained that the sovereignty of Congress should be complete; that it should have the entire management of foreign affairs, and of raising and officering armies and navies; that it should have the entire regulation of trade, determining with what countries it should be carried on, laying prohibitions and duties, and granting bounties and premiums; that it should have certain perpetual revenues of an internal character in specific taxes; that it should be authorized to institute admiralty courts, coin money, establish banks, appropriate funds, and make alliances offensive and defensive, and treaties of commerce. He recommended also that Congress should immediately organize executive departments of foreign affairs, war, marine, finance, and trade, with great officers of state at the head of each of them.'

1 These suggestions were made by Hamilton in a letter of great ability, written in 1780, while he was still in the army, to James Duane, a member of Congress from New York. It was not published until it appeared in his Life, I. 284. At its close he says: "I am persuaded a solid confederation, a permanent army, a reasonable prospect of subsisting it, would give us treble consideration in Europe, and produce a peace this winter. If a convention is called, the minds of all the states and the people ought to be prepared to receive its determinations by sensible and popular writings, which should conform to the views of Congress. There are epochs in human affairs when novelty is useful. If a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad, whether true or false, and this obstructs or relaxes the operations of the public service, a change is necessary, if it be but for the sake of change. This is exactly the case now. 'Tis an universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one, and that things do not go right on this account. The measure of a convention would revive the hopes of the people and give a new direction to their passions, which may be improved in carrying points of substantial utility. The Eastern States have already pointed out this mode to Congress: they ought to take the hint and anticipate the others." What is here said of the action of the Eastern States probably refers, not to any suggestion

Hamilton's entry into Congress in 1782 marks the commencement of his public efforts to develop the idea of a general government, whose organs should act directly and without the intervention of any state machinery. He first publicly propounded this idea in the paper which he prepared, as chairman of a committee, to be addressed to the Legislature of Rhode Island, in answer to the objections of that state to the revenue system proposed in 1781. One of these objections was that the plan proposed to introduce into the state officers unknown and unaccountable to the state itself, and, therefore, that it was against its constitution. From the prevalence of this notion we may see how difficult it was to create the idea of a national sovereignty that would consist with the sovereignty of the states, and would work in its appropriate sphere harmoniously with the state institutions, because directed to a different class of objects. The nature of a federal constitution was little understood. It was apparent that the exercise of its powers must affect the internal police of its component members to some extent; but it was not well understood that political sovereignty is capable of partition, according to the character of its subjects, so that powers of one class may be imparted to a federal, and powers of another class remain in a state constitution without destroying the sovereignty of the latter. Hamilton presented this view, and at the same time pointed out that, unless the constitution of a state expressly prohibited its legislature from granting to the federal government new power to appoint officers for a special purpose, to act within the state itself, it was competent to the legislative authority of the state to communicate such power, just as it was competent to it originally to enter into the Confederation.'

of a convention to revise the powers of the general government, but to a convention of committees of the Eastern States, which first assembled at Hartford and afterwards at Boston, in November, 1779, and in August, 1780, for regulating the prices of commodities. Journals of Congress, V. 406; VI. 271, 331, 392. But the writer may have had in his mind the convention which had just assembled in Massachusetts to form the constitution of that state. I am aware of no public proposal, as early as 1780, of a general convention to remodel the Confederacy.

1 "It is not to be presumed," he said, "that the constitution of any state means to define and fix the precise numbers and descriptions of all officers to be permit ted in the state, excluding the creation of any new ones, whatever might be the