History of the United States Constitution. George Ticknor Curtis
be taken into consideration the next day, at eleven o'clock. The discussion did not actually commence, however, until the 7th of October; but from that day it was continued until the 17th of November, when the Articles, as they afterwards went into operation, were adopted for recommendation to the States, and a circular letter was addressed to the several legislatures, submitting the plan of a confederacy, and urging its adoption.
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We are now approaching the period when the American people began to perceive that something more was necessary to their safety and happiness than the formation of State governments;—when they found, or were about to find, that some digested system of national government was essential to the great objects for which they were contending; and that, for the formation of such a government, other arrangements than the varying instructions of different colonies or states to a body of delegates were indispensable. The previous illustrations, drawn from the civil and military history of the country, have been employed to show the character and operation of the revolutionary government, the end of which is drawing near. For we have seen that the great purpose of that government was to secure the independence of each of these separate communities or states from the crown of Great Britain; that it was instituted by political societies having no direct connection with each other except the bond of a common danger and a common object; and that it was formed by no other instrumentality, and possessed no other agency, than a single body of delegates assembled in a congress. For certain great purposes, and in order to accomplish certain objects of common interest, a union of the people of the different States had indeed taken place, bringing them together to act through their representatives; but this union was now failing, from the want of definite powers; from the unwillingness of the people of the country to acquiesce in the exercise of the general revolutionary powers with which it was impliedly clothed; and from the want of suitable civil machinery. In truth, the revolutionary government was breaking down, through its inherent defects, and the peculiar infelicity of its situation. Above all, it was breaking down from the want of a civil executive to take the lead in assuming and exercising the powers implied from the great objects for which it was contending. Its legislative authority, although defined in no written instruments or public charters, was sufficient, under its implied general powers, to have enabled it to issue decrees, directing the execution, by its own agents, of all measures essential to the national safety. But this authority was never exercised, partly because the States were unwilling to execute it, but chiefly because no executive agency existed to represent the continental power, and to enforce its decrees.
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It is a singular circumstance, that, while the revolutionary government was left to conduct the great affairs of the continent through the mere instrumentality of a congress of delegates, and was thus failing for the want of departments and powers, the States were engaged in applying those great principles in the organization and construction of popular governments, under which they may be formed with rapidity and ease, and which are capable of the most varied adaptation to the circumstances and wants of a free people.
The suppression of the royal authority throughout the colonies, by virtue of the resolve of the Continental Congress passed on the 10th of May, 1776, rendered necessary the formation of local governments, capable at once of answering the ends of political society, and of continuing without interruption the protection of law over property, life, and public order. Fortunately, as we have seen, the previous constitutions of all the colonies had accustomed the people, to a great extent, to the business of government; and, when the recommendation of the Continental Congress to the several colonies to adopt such governments as would best conduce to their happiness and safety was made immediately after the first effusion of blood, it was addressed to civil societies, in which the people had, in different modes, been long accustomed to witness and to exercise the functions of legislation, and in all of which there were established forms of law, of judicature, and of executive power.
The new political situation in which they now found themselves required, in many of the colonies, but little departure from these ancient institutions. The chief innovation necessary was, to bring into practical working the authority of the people, in place of that of the crown of England, as the source of all political power. The changes requisite to effect this were of course to be made at once; the materials for these changes existed everywhere, in the representative institutions which had been long a part of the system of every colony since the first settlement of the country. Thus, as we have seen, in all the provincial, the proprietary, and the charter governments, the freemen of the colony had been accustomed to be represented in the government, in some form; and although those governments, with a few exceptions, were under the direct or indirect restraint of the crown, and could all be reached and controlled by the exercise of arbitrary power, the practice of representation, through popular elections, was everywhere known and familiar. The old constitutions of some of the colonies had also been highly democratic, admitting an election of the executive, as well as of the legislature, directly by the people;135 while, in others, where the executive was appointed by the crown, the second or less numerous branch of the legislature had been elected by the people, either directly, or indirectly through the popular assembly. The foundations, therefore, for popular governments existed in all the colonies, and furnished the means for substituting the new source of political power, the will of the people, in the place of that of an external sovereign.
But there were other materials, also, for the formation of regular and balanced governments, with nearer approaches to perfection and with far greater completeness than a mere democracy can afford to any people, however familiar they may be with the exercise and the practice of government. The people of these colonies had been so trained as to be able to apply those principles in the construction and operation of government which enable it to work freely, successfully, and wisely, while resting on a popular basis. They were able to see, that the whole of what is meant and understood by government is comprehended in the existence and due operation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers.136 They had lived under political arrangements, in which these powers had been distributed so as to keep them for the most part distinct from each other, and so as to mark the proper limitations of each. If, in some instances, the same individuals had exercised more than one of these powers, the distinctions between the departments, and the principles which ought to regulate such distinctions, had become known. The people of the colonies, in general, therefore, saw that nothing was so important, in constructing a government with popular institutions, as to balance each of these departments against the others, so as to leave to neither of them uncontrolled and irresponsible power. In general, too, they understood, and had always been accustomed to the application of that other fundamental principle, essential to a well-regulated liberty, the division of the legislative power between two separate chambers, having distinct origins and of distinct constructions.137
But none of these ideas were applied, or were yet thought of being applied, to the construction of a government for the United States; and it is therefore at this period that we are to observe the slow progress making, through disaster and trial, to those great discoveries which led the way to the Constitution, and that we are to mark the first of those failures by which the people of America learnt the bitter wisdom of experience. For the fate of the revolutionary government presents the first illustration in our history of the complete futility of a federative union, whose operation as a government should consist merely in agreeing upon measures in a general council, leaving the execution of those measures to the separate members of the confederacy. But this first illustration, we shall soon see, was not sufficient to establish this truth in the convictions of the American people.
Another and a severer trial awaited them. They were not only to be taught once more that a mere federative union was a rope of sand, but they were also to be taught, that a government instituted upon this principle for the purposes of a war, in which the separate members of the confederacy had a common interest, would not answer the exigencies of a country like this, in time of peace. They were to learn, by a trying experience, that the vast concerns of peace are far more complex than the concerns of war; that there were important functions of government to be discharged upon this continent, which only national power and national authority can accomplish, and that those functions are essential, not only to the prosperity and happiness of this nation, but to the continued existence of republican liberty within the States themselves. They were to learn this through