of which see Jameson's _Essays in the
Constitutional History of the United States_, pp. 1-45.]

[Sidenote: It was not fully endowed with sovereignty.]
The Continental Congress was therefore not in the full sense a
sovereign body. A government is not really a government until it can
impose taxes and thus command the money needful for keeping it in
existence. Nevertheless the Congress exercised some of the most
indisputable functions of sovereignty. "It declared the independence
of the United States; it contracted an offensive and defensive
alliance with France; it raised and organized a Continental army; it
borrowed large sums of money, and pledged what the lenders understood
to be the national credit for their repayment; it issued an
inconvertible paper currency, granted letters of marque, and built a
navy." [6] Finally it ratified a treaty of peace with Great Britain. So
that the Congress was really, in many respects, and in the eyes of the
world at large, a sovereign body. Time soon showed that the continued
exercise of such powers was not compatible with the absence of the
power to tax the people. In truth the situation of the Continental
Congress was an illogical situation. In the effort of throwing off
the sovereignty of Great Britain, the people of these states were
constructing a federal union faster than they realized. Their theory
of the situation did not keep pace with the facts, and their first
attempt to embody their theory, in the Articles of Confederation, was
not unnaturally a failure.

[Footnote 6: _Critical Period_, p. 93.]

[Sidenote: Decline of the Continental Congress.]
At first the powers of the Congress were vague. They were what are
called "implied war powers;" that is to say, the Congress had a war
with Great Britain on its hands, and must be supposed to have power to
do whatever was necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion.
At first, too, when it had only begun to issue paper money, there
was a momentary feeling of prosperity. Military success added to its
appearance of strength, and the reputation of the Congress reached its
high water mark early in 1778, after the capture of Burgoyne's army
and the making of the alliance with France. After that time, with the
weary prolonging of the war, the increase of the public debt, and the
collapse of the paper currency, its reputation steadily declined.
There was also much work to be done in reorganizing the state
governments, and this