osom
of their country.

[Sidenote: The causes which led to a change of the government of the
United States.]

While General Washington thus devoted a great part of his time to
rural pursuits, to the duties of friendship, and to institutions of
public utility, the political state of his country, becoming daily
more embarrassed, attracted more and more deeply the anxious
solicitude of every enlightened and virtuous patriot. From peace, from
independence, and from governments of their own choice, the United
States had confidently anticipated every blessing. The glorious
termination of their contest with one of the most powerful nations of
the earth; the steady and persevering courage with which that contest
had been maintained; and the unyielding firmness with which the
privations attending it had been supported, had surrounded the infant
republics with a great degree of splendour, and had bestowed upon them
a character which could be preserved only by a national and dignified
system of conduct. A very short time was sufficient to demonstrate,
that something not yet possessed was requisite, to insure the public
and private prosperity expected to flow from self government. After a
short struggle so to administer the existing system, as to make it
competent to the great objects for which it was instituted, the effort
became apparently desperate; and American affairs were impelled
rapidly to a crisis, on which the continuance of the United States, as
a nation, appeared to depend.

In tracing the causes which led to this interesting state of things,
it will be necessary to carry back our attention to the conclusion of
the war.

A government authorized to declare war, but relying on independent
states for the means of prosecuting it; capable of contracting debts,
and of pledging the public faith for their payment, but depending on
thirteen distinct sovereignties for the preservation of that faith,
could not be rescued from ignominy and contempt, but by finding those
sovereignties administered by men exempt from the passions incident to
human nature.

The debts of the union were computed, on the first of January, 1783,
at somewhat more than forty millions of dollars. "If," say congress,
in an address to the states, urging that the means of payment should
be placed in their hands, "other motives than that of justice could be
requisite on this occasion, no nation could ever feel stronger; for to
whom are the debts to be pa