Madison said that the federal system was in fact "nothing more than a treaty of amity, of commerce, and of alliance between independent and sovereign states." Nevertheless, the Articles of Confederation differed from an ordinary treaty in two particulars: first, they provided for a congress which was really nothing more than a "council of advisers;" and second, they contained an agreement to the effect that each state would faithfully execute its recommendations.

Since the Articles of Confederation were supposed to be a league or treaty of friendship between independent states or nations, they provided that the consent of all the states was necessary to their amendment. They provided, also, that the proposed amendment should be recommended by Congress.

But the motion offered by Hamilton and passed by the Annapolis convention, as we have seen, proposed that amendments to the Articles of Confederation should be recommended by a federal convention. Through the influence of Hamilton in New York, and Bowdoin in Massachusetts, this difficulty was to some extent obviated. The delegates in Congress from New York and Massachusetts moved that that body recommend the convention. Congress voted that it was expedient that on the second Monday of May, 1787, a convention of delegates appointed by the states, should be held in Philadelphia "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation."

Any changes in the Articles of Confederation which could fairly be called a revision of them had to leave two of its provisions untouched: first, that each state should have one vote and no state more

Two fundamen

tal features of

the Articles of Confederation.

than one; second, that those changes should receive the assent of every state before going into effect for any of them. To make a constitution providing that some states should have more power in the government than others, would strike at the fundamental principle of the confederacy-that the states were independent and sovereign, and, as such, on a footing of perfect equality. To make a constitution providing that it should go into effect when adopted by any number less than the whole would be to assume that all of the people of the thirteen states could be controlled by a part; that in some respects, at least they constituted one people, and that the opinion that they were thirteen peoples was false.

But when the Convention met it was evident, from the beginning, that all of the states would not adopt any constitution it might make. Rhode Island had sent no delegate, and even on the supposition that all the other states could be induced to adopt it, which was

Why did the convention decide to disregard the article?

very unlikely, there was every reason to suppose that Rhode Island, pursuing the selfish narrow policy that had directed her course since the close of the Revolution, would reject it. Moreover, the people of the large states felt the injustice of allow

ing the small states to have as much power in the government as they had. To give to Rhode Island as much power as to Massachusetts, and to Delaware as much as to Virginia, seemed absurd. Added to all this was the fact that the statesmen of the Convention saw that the radical difficulty with the government of the Confederation was that it dealt with states, not with individuals. It had no direct relations with individuals. It could reach them only through the roundabout and uncertain way of the state legislatures. If it wanted money it had to ask the states to tax their citizens; if it wanted troops it had to ask the states to raise them. On the principle of the Confederation there was no way of remedying this. On this principle, as we have so often seen, the states were supposed to be independent and sovereign. But no state that claimed to be sovereign could permit an outside or foreign government to come within its territory and control its inhabitants, without admitting that its sovereignty was nothing more than a shadow.

These various reasons determined the ablest men in the Convention to disregard the Articles of Confederation from the start. They determined to make a constitution providing for a government, first, that acted directly on the people of the various states; second, that gave to the states power in proportion to wealth or population, or both; and third, that should action of the be organized as soon as the constitution

Revolutionary

Convention.

had been adopted by some number less than the entire thirteen. This was nothing less than to propose a revolution, radical and fundamental. The states that adopted the constitution they proposed to make were to abandon their claim to independence and sovereignty; were to permit an outside power to enter their territories and compel their inhabitants to do its will; were to give up their claim to equality in the general government; and the states that refused to adopt it, provided it had been adopted by the number agreed on by the Convention, were, without their consent, to have the so-called government under which they lived, the government of the Confederation, destroyed. To propose this, I repeat, was to propose not merely a radical and fundamental change in the government of the states; it was to propose a revolution, a change not in accordance with the constitution. If the Convention had first resolved "that any mere revision of the Articles of Confederation would fail to meet the case, that a government must be provided for having direct relations with the people of the states, and that the necessities of the situation left no alternative but to say that a constitution providing for such a government should go into effect when it had been adopted by some number less than the whole of the states"-if the Convention had first resolved on this, and then applied in a legal way to their masters, the people of the various states, for authority to make such a constitution, and if this authority had been granted, their

action in framing such a constitution would have been constitutional, as that of the states would have been in adopting it. However profound the change in the government the constitution they proposed to make might provide for, it would not have been a revolution, because, in the case supposed, it would have been a change in accordance with the constitution. The Congress of the Confederation had a right to recommend the legislatures of the various states to authorize their delegates to make such a constitution, and their legislatures had a right to authorize it. If Congress had so recommended and the states had so authorized, the convention would then have acted in accordance with the Articles of Confederation in transforming the character of the government. Sent to Philadelphia though they had been for "the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation," they would have acted in an entirely legal way in disregarding their original instructions, because, in the case supposed, they had asked for new instructions and got them.

But when, without such instructions, they disregarded the Articles of Confederation, their action was revolutionary, and every state that adopted the constitution, sanctioned their action and became a party to it. Every such state said that the theory of the Confederation, that the states were independent and sovereign, was false. For, according to the new constitution, the states were not equal. In the house of representatives