Of these latter stationary or retrograde and always negative qualities, the Confederation largely partook. The committee, appointed by Congress, June 11, 1776, to draft a plan for governing the thirteen Colonies, shared in the feeling, indulged by the people at large, of apprehension as to the natural driftage of central power athwart popular rights. They, like their constituents, were very subject, to that political fever and ague, a shivering, chilly dread that an American parliament might grasp and abuse the power of taxation as the English congress had done, and a heated, burning fever whenever the possibility of legislation in matters of religious faith was started in any vein. Denying the power of King George, George Grenville, or any other George, to put his hand in their pockets, they thought it logical—and it was the natural logic of distrust—to refuse permission even to their own agents, although frequently elected and called to account by themselves, to agree upon any plan of mutual contribution for the common good. Smarting under wrongs inflicted in the name of government, our confederated progenitors were never able to gain political faith and strength enough to crawl out from under the shady side of authority around to its sunny, cheery, beneficent face.
The needs for a Union were yet unfelt. All the thirteen Colonies held slaves, all sloped to the Atlantic, and all, except Pennsylvania, touched the sea. Their substantial agreements created as yet no wants; their broad areas made them independent; their slight diversities were not so strong as to require the firm hand of central power to bind them within a well-hooped circle, within which aggressive rights might be so restrained as not to become antagonistically hostile, and which might yet continue so free that their forces might work together and onward in large and enlarging action.
The Committee sat for sixteen months; and in November, 1777, the lumpish, inert grub of Confederation saw the light. A poor, weak grub it was, without developed legs to go on, without eyes to see with, filmed over with a gelatinous, swathing membrane, squirming in feeble inanition, and feeling as cold as a tax-bill, or the shake of a cashier’s hand with a doubtful bank customer on discount day.
The scheme of Confederation was the child of Doubt, put out to the nurse of Jealousy.
It was watched to death by the members of the State family, each taking its turn, and each well provided with the cold-gruel theory, that what the child cried for was not good for it, and that what it really and always wanted was a sound course of starvation. And so starvation it got, with an occasional blue-pill administered by those little teasing children, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, whose jealous pretensions were of course inversely to their size. No wonder that the brat grew pale.
In a word, the States were everything, the Confederation nothing. The powers of the latter were, like poor pine boards, filled with nots. The Confederation could not, of itself, levy taxes; it could only cipher up what each State ought to pay, and then advise it to pay the sum stated. It could not raise an army; and, amid the extra jealousy against a military force, it was hardly suffered to figure out the quotas of the various States which might, if they saw fit, follow the advice, or might, if they chose, disregard it. Of course the States generally treated these debiting bills as any customer would a draft upon him, when accompanied by an intimation that, although payment was desirable to the writer, he, the correspondent, might pay or not, as and when he found it convenient. Without trembling as Felix did, they adopted the Roman governor’s mode of dealing with unpalatable advice,—thoughts and suggestions of a judgment to come being postponed to a time which, rainbow-like, never touched them. The Confederation had no power over exports or imports, or the revenue therefrom; the States sitting along the sea-shore, keeping each its own straw to suck its private fill from the large maritime bowl in front of it. It had no authority to punish treason, as the States considered it no crime to hurt or maltreat the poor manikin which they had set up.
It could not even collect more postage on letters than was barely necessary to defray the expenses of carrying the mails. As for the franking privilege, that curious Congressional levy on the public treasury, comically supposed to be repaid to the people by heavy speeches, very uncurrent and untransportable, which require all the government levers to lift them up to the unwilling hands of their constituents, this privilege was as yet undiscovered.
There was one prohibition which might, in our time, with great advantage to the public interests, be even extended; the interdict upon men going to Congress more than three years out of six. Even the three years might be profitably prohibited,—an economy of bad laws, bad speeches, bad manners, and of $1,635,000 annually paid for salaries.
It is noteworthy, however, that among the stark cold negations of the Confederation act, there were two warm affirmative provisions, one securing to persons of every color equal rights in all the States, the other making each man’s conscience the teacher and judge of his religious belief. These were the two red currents, the arterial blood, which kept alive the lumpish, footless, armless, and eyeless grub, and preserved it during the Revolution, and through the caterpillar, chrysalis condition from 1783 to 1787, until at last, in the latter year, it burst forth into the glad, beautiful, perfected butterfly, the Constitution, vital with sustaining power, bright with yellow promises, and rising joyously into the large air of healthy freedom.
The phœnix of the Confederation, that arose out of its ashy bed very larky and lustily crowing Yankee Doodle, was our present Constitution.