is was not from any absolute
inability on the part of the people to pay more; for the taxes before
the war were more than double that sum, and for the first three or four
years of the war it was computed that, with the depreciation of paper
money, the people submitted to an annual tax of about twenty million
dollars. The real difficulty lay in the character of the Confederation.
Congress might contrive but it could not command. The States might
agree, or they might disagree, or any two or more of them might only
agree to disagree; and they were more likely to do either of the last
two than the first. There was no power of coercion anywhere. All that
Congress could do was to try to frame laws that would reconcile
differences, and bring thirteen supreme governments upon some common
ground of agreement. To distract and perplex it still more, it stood
face to face with a well-disciplined and veteran army which might at any
moment, could it find a leader to its mind, march upon Philadelphia and
deal with Congress as Cromwell dealt with the Long Parliament. There
were some men, probably, in that body, who would not have been sorry to
see that precedent followed. Washington might have done it if he would.
Gates probably would have done it if he could.

To avert this threatened danger; to contrive taxation that should so
far please the taxed that they would refrain from using the power in
their hands to escape altogether any taxation for general purposes,--was
the knotty problem this Congress had to solve in order to save the
Confederacy from dissolution. There was no want of plans and expedients;
neither were there wanting men in that body who clearly understood the
conditions of the problem, and how it might be solved, and whose aim was
direct and unfaltering. Chief among them were Hamilton, Wilson,
Ellsworth, and Madison. However wrong-headed, or weak, or intemperate
others may have been, these men were usually found together on important
questions; differing sometimes in details, but unmoved by passion or
prejudice, and strong from reserved force, they overwhelmed their
opponents at the right moment with irresistible argument and by weight
of character.

In the discussion of the more important questions Mr. Madison is
conspicuous--conspicuous without being obtrusive. A reader of the
debates can hardly fail to be struck with his familiarity with English
constitutional law, and its application to the necessities of this
off