striking instance of the imbecility of the government under the
Articles of Confederation, that it could only undertake to suppress
rebellion in a State under the pretense of doing something else which
came within the law. Massachusetts, it is true, was quite able to deal
with her insurgents; but when Congress convened it was not known in New
York that Lincoln had dispersed the main body of them at Petersham.
Nevertheless, a like difficulty might arise at any moment in any other
of the States, where the strength to meet it might be quite inadequate.

Madison's ideal still was, the Union before the States, and for the
sake of the States; the whole before the parts, to save the parts; the
binding the fagot together that the sticks might not be lost. "Our
situation," he wrote to Edmund Randolph in February, "is becoming every
day more and more critical. No money comes into the federal treasury; no
respect is paid to the federal authority; and people of reflection
unanimously agree that the existing Confederacy is tottering to its
foundation. Many individuals of weight, particularly in the eastern
district, are suspected of leaning toward monarchy. Other individuals
predict a partition of the States into two or more confederacies. It is
pretty certain that if some radical amendment of the single one cannot
be devised and introduced, one or the other of these revolutions, the
latter no doubt, will take place."

It is not impossible that Madison himself may have had some faith in
this suspicion that "individuals of weight in the eastern district" were
inclined to a monarchy. For such suspicion, however there could be
little real foundation. There were, doubtless, men of weight who thought
and said that monarchy was better than anarchy. There were, doubtless,
impatient men then who thought and said, as there are impatient men now
who think and say, that the rule of a king is better than the rule of
the people. But there was no disloyalty to government by the people
among those who only maintained that the English in America must draw
from the common heritage of English institutions and English law the
material wherewith to build up the foundations of a new nation. No
intelligent and candid man doubts now that they were wise; nor would it
have been long doubted then, had it not so speedily become manifest
that, if the stigma of "British" was once affixed to a political party,
any appeal from popular prejudice to reason and comm