I have hitherto considered each state as a separate whole and have explained the different springs which the people there put in motion, and the different means of action which it employs. But all the states which I have considered as independent are yet forced to submit, in certain cases, to the supreme authority of the Union. The time has now come to examine the portion of sovereignty that has been granted to the Union, and to cast a rapid glance over the Federal Constitution.
HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. Origin of the first Union --Its weakness--Congress appeals to the constituent authority --Interval of two years between this appeal and the promulgation of the new Constitution.
THE thirteen colonies, which simultaneously threw off the yoke of England towards the end of the last century, had, as I have already said, the same religion, the same language, the same customs, and almost the same laws; they were struggling against a common enemy; and these reasons were sufficiently strong to unite them to one another and to consolidate them into one nation. But as each of them had always had a separate existence and a government within its reach, separate interests and peculiar customs had sprung up which were opposed to such a compact and intimate union as would have absorbed the individual importance of each in the general importance of all. Hence arose two opposite tendencies, the one prompting the Anglo-Americans to unite, the other to divide, their strength.
As long as the war with the mother country lasted, the principle of union was kept alive by necessity; and although the laws that constituted it were defective, the common tie subsisted in spite of their imperfections.1 But no sooner was peace concluded than the faults of this legislation became manifest, and the state seemed to be suddenly dissolved. Each colony became an independent republic, and assumed an absolute sovereignty. The Federal government, condemned to impotence by its Constitution and no longer sustained by the presence of a common danger, witnessed the outrages offered to its flag by the great nations of Europe, while it was scarcely able to maintain its ground against the Indian tribes, and to pay the interest of the debt which had been contracted during the War of Independence. It was already on the verge of destruction when it officially proclaimed its inability to conduct the government and appealed to the constituent authority.2
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch08.htm
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Gunny G: BLOGGER 1984 +
http://gunnyg.blogspot.com
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