Let
each county in this commonwealth be supposed free and independent: let
your revenues depend on requisitions of proportionate quotas from them:
let application be made to them repeatedly, and then ask yourself, is it
to be presumed that they would comply, or that an adequate collection
could be made from partial compliances? It is now difficult to collect
the taxes from them: how much would that difficulty be enhanced, were
you to depend solely on their generosity? I appeal to the reason of
every gentleman here, and to his candor, to say whether he is not
persuaded that the present confederation is as feeble as the government
of Virginia would be in that case; to the same reason I appeal, whether
it be compatible with prudence to continue a government of such manifest
and palpable weakness and inefficiency.

II. -- CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT.

Constitutional government in the United States began, in its national
phase, with the inauguration of Washington, but the experiment was for a
long time a doubtful one. Of the two parties, the federal and the
anti-federal parties, which had faced one another on the question of the
adoption of the Constitution, the latter had disappeared. Its
conspicuous failure to achieve the fundamental object of its existence,
and the evident hopelessnesss of reversing its failure in future,
blotted it out of existence. There was left but one party, the federal
party; and it, strong as it appeared, was really in almost as precarious
a position as its former opponent, because of the very completeness of
its success in achieving its fundamental object. Hamilton and Jefferson,
two of its representative members, were opposed in almost all the
political instincts of their natures; the former chose the restraints of
strong government as instinctively as the latter clung to individualism.
They had been accidentally united for the time in desiring the adoption
of the Constitution, though Hamilton considered it only a temporary
shift for something stronger, while Jefferson wished for a bill of
rights to weaken the force of some of its implications. Now that the
Constitution was ratified, what tie was there to hold these two to any
united action for the future? Nothing but a shadow--the name of a party
not yet two years old. As soon, therefore, as the federal party fairly
entered upon a secure tenure of power, the divergent instincts of the
two classes represented by Hamilton and Jefferson beg