Criticism of the Confederation which our fathers framed to take the
place of British rule must be tempered by the reflection that the
action was taken while the land was in the chaos of war. Praise is due
their genius for organisation, inherited from the mother country they
were warring against, which enabled them to contemplate a new form of
government while engaged in dissolving the old. The Government is dead;
long live the Government. According to the intention, there was to be
no interregnum in which Anarchy might rear his ugly head, and destroy
existing forms and instincts of government. Unfortunately a genius for
undertaking a beneficent enterprise may lack opportunity of carrying
it out. The war to secure the permanence of the Government they were
trying to establish produced a delay in completing the frame, and
allowed the individual States to assume a headway and win the people
to an allegiance, which the Union has not yet fully overcome.
In the form of British colonies, the States were well-recognised units
before resistance to authority compelled the people to entrust the
common defence to an irregularly formed Continental Congress.
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