e. The federal government had
possessed no means of enforcing obedience to its laws. Its edicts were
without a sanction; and this was because they operated upon states, and
not upon individuals. When an individual defies the law, you can lock
him up in jail, or levy an execution upon his property. The immense
force of the community is arrayed against him, and he is as helpless as
a straw on the billows of the ocean. He cannot raise a militia to
protect himself. But when the law is defied by a state, it is quite
otherwise. You cannot put a state into jail, nor seize its goods; you
can only make war on it, and if you try that expedient you find that the
state is not helpless. Its local pride and prejudices are aroused
against you, and its militia will turn out in full force to uphold the
infraction of law. Against this obstinate and exasperated military force
what superior force can you bring? Under some rare combination of
circumstances you might get the military force of several of the other
states; but ordinarily, when what you are trying to do is simply to
enforce every-day laws, and when you simply represent a distrusted
general government in conflict with a local government, you cannot do
this. The other states will sympathize with the delinquent state; they
will feel that the very same condition of things which leads you to
attack that state to-day will lead you to attack some other state
to-morrow. Hence you cannot get any military help, and you are
powerless.

Such was the case with the Continental Congress. A novel and distrusted
institution, it was called upon to enforce its laws upon
long-established communities, full of sturdy independence and obstinate
local prejudices. It was able to act, though with clumsy slowness, as
long as there was an enemy in the field who was even more dreaded. But
as soon as this enemy had been beaten out of sight it could not act at
all. This had been because it did not represent the American people, but
only the American states. The vital force which moved it was not the
resistless force of a whole people, but only a shadowy semblance of
force, derived from a theoretical consent of thirteen corporate bodies,
which in their corporate capacity could never be compelled to agree
about anything under the sun; and unless compelled they would not agree.
Four years of disturbance in every part of the country, in the course of
which troops had been called out in several states, and civil