efore, were of the
Confederation, and I know no better description of the interval just
subsequent to the peace of 1783, than is contained in a few lines in his
dissenting opinion in the Charles River Bridge Case:--

"In order to entertain a just view of this subject, we must go back to
that period of general bankruptcy, and distress and difficulty
(1785).... The union of the States was crumbling into ruins, under the
old Confederation. Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce were at their
lowest ebb. There was infinite danger to all the States from local
interests and jealousies, and from the apparent impossibility of a much
longer adherence to that shadow of a government, the Continental
Congress. And even four years afterwards, when every evil had been
greatly aggravated, and civil war was added to other calamities, the
Constitution of the United States was all but shipwrecked in passing
through the state conventions."[1]

This crisis, according to my computation, was the normal one of the
third generation. Between 1688 and 1765 the British Empire had
physically outgrown its legal envelope, and the consequence was a
revolution. The thirteen American colonies, which formed the western
section of the imperial mass, split from the core and drifted into
chaos, beyond the constraint of existing law. Washington was, in his
way, a large capitalist, but he was much more. He was not only a wealthy
planter, but he was an engineer, a traveller, to an extent a
manufacturer, a politician, and a soldier, and he saw that, as a
conservative, he must be "Progressive" and raise the law to a power high
enough to constrain all these thirteen refractory units. For Washington
understood that peace does not consist in talking platitudes at
conferences, but in organizing a sovereignty strong enough to coerce its
subjects.

The problem of constructing such a sovereignty was the problem which
Washington solved, temporarily at least, without violence. He prevailed
not only because of an intelligence and elevation of character which
enabled him to comprehend, and to persuade others, that, to attain a
common end, all must make sacrifices, but also because he was supported
by a body of the most remarkable men whom America has ever produced. Men
who, though doubtless in a numerical minority, taking the country as a
whole, by sheer weight of ability and energy, achieved their purpose.

Yet even Washington and his adherents could not alter the l