y practical political experience. Before the Convention
met, some of the leading men in the country had prepared lists of the
defects which existed in the Articles of Confederation, and in the
Constitution practically every one of these defects was corrected and by
means which had already been tested in the States and under the Articles
of Confederation.

CHAPTER VIII. THE UNION ESTABLISHED

The course of English history shops that Anglo-Saxon tradition is
strongly in favor of observing precedents and of trying to maintain
at least the form of law, even in revolutions. When the English people
found it impossible to bear with James II and made it so uncomfortable
for him that he fled the country, they shifted the responsibility from
their own shoulders by charging him with "breaking the original Contract
between King and People." When the Thirteen Colonies had reached the
point where they felt that they must separate from England, their
spokesman, Thomas Jefferson, found the necessary justification in the
fundamental compact of the first settlers "in the wilds of America"
where "the emigrants thought proper to adopt that system of laws
under which they had hitherto lived in the mother country"; and in the
Declaration of Independence he charged the King of Great Britain with
"repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."

And so it was with the change to the new form of government in the
United States, which was accomplished only by disregarding the forms
prescribed in the Articles of Confederation and has been called,
therefore, "the Revolution of 1789." From the outset the new
constitution was placed under the sanction of the old. The movement
began with an attempt, outwardly at least, to revise the Articles of
Confederation and in that form was authorized by Congress. The first
breach with the past was made when the proposal in the Virginia
Resolutions was accepted that amendments made by the Convention in the
Articles of Confederation should be submitted to assemblies chosen by
the people instead of to the legislatures of the separate States. This
was the more readily accepted because it was believed that ratification
by the legislatures would result in the formation of a treaty rather
than in a working instrument of government. The next step was to
prevent the work of the Convention from meeting the fate of all previous
amendments to