ct as an executive body
when it was not in session; but this device, on being tried out, proved
a failure. There was no system of national courts to which citizens and
states could appeal for the protection of their rights or through which
they could compel obedience to law. The two great powers of government,
military and financial, were withheld. Congress, it is true, could
authorize expenditures but had to rely upon the states for the payment
of contributions to meet its bills. It could also order the
establishment of an army, but it could only request the states to supply
their respective quotas of soldiers. It could not lay taxes nor bring
any pressure to bear upon a single citizen in the whole country. It
could act only through the medium of the state governments.

=Financial and Commercial Disorders.=--In the field of public finance,
the disorders were pronounced. The huge debt incurred during the war was
still outstanding. Congress was unable to pay either the interest or the
principal. Public creditors were in despair, as the market value of
their bonds sank to twenty-five or even ten cents on the dollar. The
current bills of Congress were unpaid. As some one complained, there was
not enough money in the treasury to buy pen and ink with which to record
the transactions of the shadow legislature. The currency was in utter
chaos. Millions of dollars in notes issued by Congress had become mere
trash worth a cent or two on the dollar. There was no other expression
of contempt so forceful as the popular saying: "not worth a
Continental." To make matters worse, several of the states were pouring
new streams of paper money from the press. Almost the only good money in
circulation consisted of English, French, and Spanish coins, and the
public was even defrauded by them because money changers were busy
clipping and filing away the metal. Foreign commerce was unsettled. The
entire British system of trade discrimination was turned against the
Americans, and Congress, having no power to regulate foreign commerce,
was unable to retaliate or to negotiate treaties which it could enforce.
Domestic commerce was impeded by the jealousies of the states, which
erected tariff barriers against their neighbors. The condition of the
currency made the exchange of money and goods extremely difficult, and,
as if to increase the confusion, backward states enacted laws hindering
the prompt collection of debts within their borders--an evil