1476. CONFEDERATION, Defects of.—[further continued].
The fundamental defect of the Confederation was that Congress was
not authorized to act immediately on the people,
and by its own officers. Their power was
only requisitory, and these requisitions were
addressed to the several Legislatures, to be
by them carried into execution, without other
coercion than the moral principle of duty.
This allowed in fact a negative to every Legislature,
on every measure proposed by Congress;
a negative so frequently exercised in
practice as to benumb the action of the Federal
Government, and to render it inefficient
in its general objects, and more especially in
pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want,
too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive,
and Judiciary functions, worked disadvantageously
in practice. Yet this state of
things afforded a happy augury of the future
march of our confederacy, when it was seen
that the good sense and good dispositions of
the people, as soon as they perceived the incompetence
of their first compact, instead
of leaving its correction to insurrection and
civil war, agreed with one voice to elect deputies
to a general Convention, who should
peaceably meet and agree on such a Constitution
as “would ensure peace, justice, liberty,
the common defence and general welfare.”—
Autobiography. Washington ed. i, 78.
Ford ed., i, 108.
(1821)
