ects, which can hardly fail to mislead
the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which
the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the
councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the
ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been
conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have seen
how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure of
circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on important
points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to induce a
number of such assemblies, deliberating at a distance from each other,
at different times, and under different impressions, long to co-operate
in the same views and pursuits.

In our case, the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is
requisite, under the Confederation, to the complete execution of every
important measure that proceeds from the Union. It has happened as was
to have been foreseen. The measures of the Union have not been executed;
the delinquencies of the States have, step by step, matured themselves
to an extreme, which has, at length, arrested all the wheels of the
national government, and brought them to an awful stand. Congress
at this time scarcely possess the means of keeping up the forms of
administration, till the States can have time to agree upon a more
substantial substitute for the present shadow of a federal government.
Things did not come to this desperate extremity at once. The
causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and
disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the
Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of
example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least
delinquent States. Why should we do more in proportion than those who
are embarked with us in the same political voyage? Why should we consent
to bear more than our proper share of the common burden? These were
suggestions which human selfishness could not withstand, and which even
speculative men, who looked forward to remote consequences, could not,
without hesitation, combat. Each State, yielding to the persuasive voice
of immediate interest or convenience, has successively withdrawn its
support, till the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon
our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins.

PUBLIUS

1. "I mean for the Union."