; its revenues were completely exhausted and it had no power to
replenish them. The British Government complained that the conditions of
peace were not observed on the American side, and accordingly held on to
the positions which it had occupied at the conclusion of the war. The
complaint was perfectly just, but it did not arise from deliberate bad
faith on the part of those who directed (as far as anyone was directing)
American policy, but from the simple fact that there was no authority in
America capable of enforcing obedience and carrying the provisions of
the treaty into effect. The same moral was enforced by a dozen other
symptoms of disorder. The Congress had disbanded the soldiers, as had
been promised, on the conclusion of peace, but, having no money, could
not keep its at least equally important promise to pay them. This led to
much casual looting by men with arms in their hands but nowhere to turn
for a meal, and the trouble culminated in a rebellion raised in New
England by an old soldier of the Continental Army called Shay. Such
incidents as these were the immediate cause of the summoning at
Philadelphia of a Convention charged with the task of framing a
Constitution for the United States.

Of such a Convention Washington was the only possible President; and he
was drawn from a temporary and welcome retirement in his Virginian home
to re-enter in a new fashion the service of his country. Under his
presidency disputed and compromised a crowd of able men representative
of the widely divergent States whose union was to be attempted. There
was Alexander Hamilton, indifferent or hostile to the democratic idea
but intensely patriotic, and bent above all things upon the formation of
a strong central authority; Franklin with his acute practicality and his
admirable tact in dealing with men; Gerry, the New Englander, Whiggish
and somewhat distrustful of the populace; Pinckney of South Carolina, a
soldier and the most ardent of the Federalists, representing, by a
curious irony, the State which was to be the home of the most extreme
dogma of State Rights; Madison, the Virginian, young, ardent and
intellectual, his head full of the new wine of liberty. One great name
is lacking. Jefferson had been chosen to represent the Confederacy at
the French Court, where he had the delight of watching the first act of
that tremendous drama, whereby his own accepted doctrine was to re-shape
France, as it had already re-shaped Americ