h Franklin has said that it is a "dear
school, but fools will learn in no other."

The founders of the Republic were not fools, and while they did not, as
Gladstone seems to intimate, have the inspired wisdom to develop a
wonderful Constitution by sheer intuition unaided by experience, they
did have the ability to make of their very errors the stepping-stones to
a higher destiny.

By the Articles of Confederation, which, as stated, became effective in
1781, the conduct of foreign affairs was vested in the new government,
which was also given the power to create admiralty courts, regulate
coinage, maintain an army and navy, borrow money, and emit bills of
credit, but the great limitation was that in all other respects the
constituent States retained absolute power, especially with reference to
commerce and taxation. All that the central government could do was to
requisition the States to furnish food supplies, and the States were
then left to impose the taxes and, if necessary, to enforce their
payment in their own way, with the inevitable result that they vied with
each other in the struggle to evade them. The Confederation had no
direct power over the citizens of the several States. Moreover, the
Congress could not levy any taxes, or indeed pass any measure unless
nine out of the thirteen States agreed, and the Constitution could not
be amended except by unanimous vote. While the Congress could select a
presiding officer to serve for one year, yet he had no real executive
authority. During the recess of the Congress, a committee of thirteen,
consisting of one delegate from each State, had _ad interim_ powers, but
not greater than the Congress, which they represented.

Such a government would have been fatal to any people, and so it nearly
proved to be to the infant nation. Two circumstances saved them from the
consequences of such incapacity: one was the invaluable aid of France,
and the other the personality of George Washington. Of this great
leader, one of the noblest that ever "lived in the tide of time," it is
only necessary to quote the fine tribute paid to him by the greatest of
the Victorian novelists in his _Virginians_:

"What a constancy, what a magnanimity, what a surprising
persistence against fortune!... Washington, the chief of a nation
in arms, doing battle with distracted parties; calm in the midst of
conspiracy; serene against the open foe before him and the darker
enemies at