Government in the United States, National, State and Local

by James Wilford Garner

The States Retained too Much Power.—The union turned out to be the loosest sort of a league, in which the states for the most part did as they pleased. Each retained its own sovereignty and could not be compelled to perform its obligations as a member of the Confederation. Some of them deliberately violated the treaty of peace with Great Britain, and the Congress was unable to prevent such infractions. Congress being thus powerless to carry out the stipulations of the treaty, Great Britain refused to perform her obligations thereunder. Since no executive department and no courts were created to enforce and apply the laws passed by Congress, the nation had to depend upon the states to carry out its will.

The Congress was not well Organized.—In the organization and procedure of Congress there were serious defects. No member could serve for more than three years in six, and each state paid its own members and might recall them at pleasure. Thus the dependence of the representative upon his state was emphasized and his character as a national representative minimized. Worse than this was the provision that allowed each state, regardless of its population and size, but one vote in Congress. Thus Georgia with a population of only a few thousand souls enjoyed the same power in all matters of national legislation that Virginia did, although the population of Virginia was some sixteen times as great. Still another serious weakness was the rule which required the assent of nine states to pass any important bill, such as those for borrowing or appropriating money, issuing bills of credit, declaring war, entering into treaties, coining money, building war ships, raising military forces, selecting commanders, and the like. As it was frequently impossible to secure the concurrence of so large a proportion of the states, needed legislation was often prevented by the opposition of a few members or by the lack of a quorum. Thus in April, 1783, there were present only twenty-five members from eleven states, nine being represented by only two members each. It would have been possible, therefore, for three members to defeat any important measure.[24]

Congress had No Power of Taxation.—Not only were the defects in the organization and procedure of Congress of a serious character, but the powers conferred upon it by the Articles of Confederation were so meager that its authority was little more than a shadow and carried little weight. One of the essential powers of government is that of taxation, yet the Congress had no authority to impose a dollar of taxes on any individual in the land. Money was needed to pay the soldiers who were fighting the battles of the country, to pay the salaries and expenses of diplomatic representatives who had been sent to Europe to negotiate treaties and solicit the aid of foreign friends, to pay interest on loans incurred in France and Holland, to defray the cost of building war ships and equipping the army, and to meet the various other expenses which every government must needs incur, yet the government of the Confederation was powerless to raise the necessary funds by taxation. In the absence of all power to levy and collect taxes, Congress adopted the policy of apportioning the national expenses among the states. But no state could be compelled to contribute a dollar toward its quota; some of them in fact contributed little, and most of those which did respond to the appeal of Congress did so grudgingly and tardily. Of the $15,000,000 apportioned among the states between 1781 and 1786 less than $2,000,000 was actually paid in. Often there was not a dollar in the treasury of the Confederation to pay the obligations of the government.

Two attempts were made to amend the Articles of Confederation so as to give Congress power to levy a five per cent tariff duty on imported goods, but since it required the assent of each of the thirteen states to adopt an amendment, the scheme fell through, in both cases on account of the opposition of a single state.

Congress had No Power to Regulate Commerce, either with foreign countries or among the states themselves. This was a serious defect. Each state had its own tariff system and its own customhouses, and collected its own duties on goods brought into its ports from abroad. As each state was anxious to exploit this source of revenue for itself, it naturally framed its tariff regulations and tonnage laws in such a way as to attract foreign commerce to its own ports. And so it was with regard to commerce among the states themselves. Each framed its trade regulations with its neighbors according to its own selfish interests and without regard to the general good. The result was continual jealousies, dissensions, and sometimes reprisals and retaliations. New York levied an import duty on certain articles brought in from its less fortunate neighbors, Connecticut and New Jersey, and each in turn retaliated as best it could. For purposes of foreign and interstate commerce, each state was a nation itself, and the Confederation was a nonentity.

The Annapolis Convention.—The worst evils described above reached a climax in 1786, and the political leaders of America such as Hamilton and Washington were convinced that the government of the Confederation must either be revised or superseded entirely by a new system. In September, 1786, there assembled at Annapolis, Maryland, a convention of delegates from five states, namely, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, called at the instance of the legislature of Virginia to take into consideration the subject of uniform trade regulation among the states, the lack of which had come to be one of the chief evils of the Confederation. So few states were represented that the convention decided not to enter upon the business for which it had been called, but instead determined to put forth an effort to bring about the assembling of a convention representing all the states and empowered to take into consideration the question of a general revision of the Articles of Confederation so as to render them more adequate to the needs of the nation. Accordingly, a resolution prepared by Alexander Hamilton, one of the delegates from New York, was adopted, calling on the states to appoint delegates to a convention to be held at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787; Personnel.—In pursuance of this resolution, all the states except Rhode Island promptly appointed delegates, the failure of Rhode Island being due to her satisfaction with the Confederation, under which she enjoyed larger commercial advantages than she could hope to enjoy if the Articles were amended so as to take away from the states their control over commerce. Altogether fifty-five members sat in the convention at one time or another, though only thirty-nine signed the Constitution. From Virginia came George Washington, Edmund Randolph, and James Madison; from Massachusetts, Rufus King and Elbridge Gerry; from Connecticut, William Samuel Johnson and Roger Sherman; from New Hampshire, John Langdon; from New York, Alexander Hamilton; from New Jersey, William Livingston and William Paterson; from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Jared Ingersoll, and James Wilson; from Delaware, John Dickinson; and from South Carolina, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Some of the delegates, as Benjamin Franklin, had been members of the Albany Congress as far back as 1754; some had been members of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765; most of them had served in the Continental or Confederation Congresses; and a number of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence. A great many of them had served in the legislatures of their states, and of the whole number there was not one who had not had some legislative experience.

The Work of the Convention of 1787.—When the convention had been duly organized, "plans" of a proposed constitution were submitted by the delegations of several states, and these became the bases of the discussion which followed.

The Virginia Plan.—The plan submitted by the Virginia delegation represented the views of delegates from the larger and more populous states, and the Constitution as finally adopted embodied more largely the features of this plan than those of any other. The most important resolution of this plan was that a national government ought to be established consisting of a supreme legislative, judiciary, and executive. This resolution, adopted in committee of the whole, went directly to the root of the chief evil of the existing system, which contained no provision for an executive or a judicial department. It recognized also what has come to be a fundamental doctrine of American political science, namely, the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions.

The New Jersey Plan.—The views of delegates from the small states were embodied in the New Jersey plan, which was laid before the convention by William Paterson. In general, the New Jersey plan provided for the retention of the principal features of the existing system, except that it proposed to enlarge the powers of Congress so as to make its authority more effective. This was all, in the judgment of the small states, that was necessary to remove the existing evils.