tory members? Practically, however, the remedy was one which could
never have been applied without breaking the Confederation into
fragments. To use the army or navy in coercing a state meant nothing
less than civil war. The local yeomanry would have turned out against
the Continental army with as high a spirit as that with which they
swarmed about the British enemy at Lexington or King's Mountain. A
government which could not collect the taxes for its yearly budget
without firing upon citizens or blockading two or three harbours would
have been the absurdest political anomaly imaginable. No such idea could
have entered the mind of a statesman save from the hope that if one
state should prove refractory, all the others would immediately frown
upon it and uphold Congress in overawing it. In such case the knowledge
that Congress had the power would doubtless have been enough to make its
exercise unnecessary. But in fact this hope was disappointed, for the
delinquency of each state simply set an example of disobedience for all
the others to follow; and the amendment, had it been carried, would
merely have armed Congress with a threat which everybody would have
laughed at. So manifestly hopeless was the case to Pelatiah Webster that
as early as May, 1781, he published an able pamphlet, urging the
necessity for a federal convention for overhauling the whole scheme of
government from beginning to end.

[Sidenote: Military weakness of the government.]

The military weakness due to this imperfect governmental organization
may be illustrated by comparing the number of regular troops which
Congress was able to keep in the field during the Revolutionary War with
the number maintained by the United States government during the War of
Secession. A rough estimate, obtained from averages, will suffice to
show the broad contrast. In 1863, the middle year of the War of
Secession, the total population of the loyal states was about
23,491,600, of whom about one fifth, or 4,698,320, were adult males of
military age. Supposing one adult male out of every five to have been
under arms at one time, the number would have been 939,664. Now the
total number of troops enlisted in the northern army during the four
years of the war, reduced to a uniform standard, was 2,320,272, or an
average of 580,068 under arms in any single year. In point of fact,
this average was reached before the middle of the war, and the numbers
went on increasing, until at