worst hardships had been chiefly due to
want of organization. Congress had steadily declined in power and in
respectability; it was much weaker at the end of the war than at the
beginning; and there was reason to fear that as soon as the common
pressure was removed the need for concerted action would quite cease to
be felt, and the scarcely formed Union would break into pieces. There
was the greater reason for such a fear in that, while no strong
sentiment had as yet grown up in favour of union, there was an intensely
powerful sentiment in favour of local self-government. This feeling was
scarcely less strong as between states like Connecticut and Rhode
Island, or Maryland and Virginia, than it was between Athens and Megara,
Argos and Sparta, in the great days of Grecian history. A most wholesome
feeling it was, and one which needed not so much to be curbed as to be
guided in the right direction. It was a feeling which was shared by some
of the foremost Revolutionary leaders, such as Samuel Adams and Richard
Henry Lee. But unless the most profound and delicate statesmanship
should be forthcoming, to take this sentiment under its guidance, there
was much reason to fear that the release from the common adhesion to
Great Britain would end in setting up thirteen little republics, ripe
for endless squabbling, like the republics of ancient Greece and
mediaeval Italy, and ready to become the prey of England and Spain, even
as Greece became the prey of Macedonia.

[Sidenote: False historic analogies.]

As such a lamentable result was dreaded by Washington, so by statesmen
in Europe it was generally expected, and by our enemies it was eagerly
hoped for. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, was a far-sighted man in
many things; but he said, "As to the future grandeur of America, and
its being a rising empire under one head, whether republican or
monarchical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary notions that
ever was conceived even by writers of romance. The mutual antipathies
and clashing interests of the Americans, their difference of
governments, habitudes, and manners, indicate that they will have no
centre of union and no common interest. They never can be united into
one compact empire under any species of government whatever; a disunited
people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other,
they will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths or
principalities, according to natural boundaries