After having had months to think about it, this enraptured enthusiast of popular upheaval spread his wings and was carried far into crimson skies. "Can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted?" exclaimed Jefferson, of the Massachusetts anarchical outburst, nearly a year after it had ended; and continued thus:—
"God forbid! we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.... What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms!... What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."[943]
Thus did his contact with a decadent monarchy on the one hand and an enchanting philosophy on the other hand, help to fit him for the leadership of American radicalism. No better training for that mission could have been afforded. French thought was already challenging all forms of existing public control; it was a spirit Gamaliel which found in Jefferson an eager Saul at its feet; and American opinion was prepared for its doctrines. In the United States general dislike and denunciation of the established governments had uncovered the feeling against government itself which lay at the root of opposition to any stronger one.
The existing American system was a very masterpiece of weakness. The so-called Federal Government was like a horse with thirteen bridle reins, each held in the hands of separate drivers who usually pulled the confused and powerless beast in different directions. Congress could make treaties with foreign nations; but each of the States could and often did violate them at will. It could borrow money, but could not levy taxes or impose duties to pay the debt. Congress could get money only by making humble requests, called "requisitions," on the "sovereign" Commonwealths. It had to depend upon the whims of the various States for funds to discharge principal and interest of public obligations; and these springs of revenue, when not entirely dry, yielded so little that the Federal establishment was like to die of financial thirst.[944]
The requisitions of Congress upon the various States for money to pay the National obligations to foreign creditors were usually treated with neglect and often with contempt by those jealous and pompous "Sovereignties." "Requisitions are a perfect nullity where thirteen sovereign, independent, disunited States are in the habit of discussing and refusing compliance with them at their option. Requisitions are actually little better than a jest and a by-word throughout the land. If you tell the legislatures they have violated the treaty of peace, and invaded the prerogatives of the confederacy, they will laugh in your face."[945] Thus raged Washington. "Congress cannot command money" even to redeem Americans held in slavery in Algiers,[946] testified the powerless and despondent Secretary of State. Indeed, Congress amounted to so little that the delegates from many States often refused to attend.[947]
Though debts were great and financial confusion maddening, they furnished no solid excuse for the failure of the States to enable Congress to preserve American honor by the payment of our admitted National debt. Jay reviewed the situation and showed that "the resources of the country ... notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, are abundant.... Our country is fertile, abounding in useful productions, and those productions in demand and bearing a good price."[948] The general opinion appears to have been that the people did not want to support the Government.
"The treasury is empty, though the country abounds in resources, and our people are far more unwilling than unable to pay taxes," wrote Jay, early in 1787.[949] Madison excused his support of the bill authorizing tobacco to be taken for specie in payment of taxes, upon the ground that it "could not be rejected without ... exciting some worse project of a popular cast";[950] and "by a fear that some greater evil under the name of relief to the people would be substituted."[951] Debt "made it extremely inconvenient to most people to submit to a regular government," was the conclusion Rutledge finally reached.[952]
But, whatever the cause, the States did not act. Washington thought it a combination of the scheming of demagogues and the ignorance and dishonesty of the people. "I think there is more wickedness than ignorance mixed in our councils.... Ignorance and design are difficult to combat.... To be so fallen! so lost!... Virtue, I fear has in a great degree taken its departure from our land and the want of a disposition to do justice is the source of the national embarrassments; for, whatever guise or colorings are given to them, this I apprehend is the origin of the evils we now feel."[953] Such was Washington's cry of despair four years after he had wrested American liberty from Great Britain.
Look where one will among the class of men of whom Washington was the highest representative, one finds that they believed the fountain head of the country's desperate conditions to be in the people themselves. Jay put this opinion in a nutshell when he said, "The mass of men are neither wise nor good."[954] Not that these leaders despaired that an American People would finally be evolved who should realize the exalted expectations of the patriot leaders of the Revolution; not that out of the flux of popular heedlessness and dishonor, indifference and disorder, idleness and avarice, the nobler qualities of human nature would not, in the end, bring forth a nation and rule it for the happiness and well-being of its people. But they thought that only a strong government could fashion the clay and breathe into its nostrils the breath of life. "Virtue, like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn to a point and exerted by strong circumstances ably managed, or a strong government ably administered," said Jay.[955]
The shield of all this turmoil and baseness was the State Governments. "Their unreasonable jealousy of that body [Congress] and of one another ... will, if there is not a change in the system, be our downfall as a nation," exclaimed Washington only a few months after peace had been established.[956] It was the States, he declared, which made the Federal establishment "a half-starved, limping government, that appears to be always moving upon crutches and tottering at every step."[957]