ing independence. This evening I shall return briefly to the Congress, and endeavor to complete our view of the elements of the civil government of the Revolution by a sketch of the characteristic features of the State governments.

Congress had now accomplished one part of its task, and with a calmness, judgment, and wisdom that confirmed men in their persuasion of its capacity to deal with these delicate questions and bear these grave responsibilities. To the world, too, there was an appearance of unanimity in its counsels which added materially to its authority; for it still deliberated with closed doors, and, publishing its acts, passed silently over its discussions. It was known, however, even then, that there were differences of opinion among its members, though few out of Congress knew their nature or their

extent.

Shall we, at this distant day, seek to remove the veil and lay bare the dissensions and personal jealousies which disturbed, although they did not destroy its harmony of resolve, retarded, although they did not prevent its harmony of action? It seems an invidious and ungrateful task to tell how John Dickinson gave John Adams the cut direct in the streets of Philadelphia; how, one day, as several members were walking together in the lobby, Jay took Richard Henry Lee by the button, and, drawing him towards Jefferson, made him declare he had never denied that Jay wrote the

address to the people of England; how Samuel Adams-for though chronologically it comes two years later, yet it belongs in spirit full as much to this as to any other period-how then Samuel Adams turned short upon poor Duponceau, who had addressed him as John Adams, and said, "I would have you to know, sir, that there is a great difference between Samuel Adams and John Adams." Such things are sad, very sad; and it is far pleasanter to think of the author of the "Farmer's Letters" as grasping cordially the hand of the author of "Novanglus" wherever he met him, and the eloquent Lee as rejoicing with a brother's joy in the eloquence of Jay.

But these things are history; stern, impartial, truth-loving history; and it is a wilful rejecting of the most instructive of her lessons arbitrarily to blot the page which reminds us that even the greatest and wisest of men are not altogether exempt from the weaknesses of humanity. I would not dwell upon such things, for they sadden and mortify me. But when I look upon the men of my own day, and hear and read what is said of their errors and weaknesses, I find it a gentle persuasive to charity to remember that weakness and greatness have so often dwelt side by side in the noblest intellects and truest hearts.

Fortunately there was no Horace Walpole in our Congress to distort the picture by bestowing all his finest touches and richest tints upon the

worst parts of it. The little that has been preserved in letters and diaries, the little that has crept out through avenues which, however closely guarded, could never be so completely closed but that some secrets would find their way through them, are sufficient for the truth of history; and I gladly turn from them to the contemplation of that pure wisdom and exalted patriotism, in the splendor of whose rays these spots on the bright orbs of our political system are wellnigh lost.

You have already seen that on the 11th of June, immediately after appointing the committee for drafting a "Declaration of Independence," Congress resolved "that a committee be appointed to prepare and digest the form of a Confederation to be entered into between these Colonies," and another to "prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers." The first of these resolves gave us the Confederation; the second I shall return to in a future lecture.*

As we look back upon the Confederation, we are apt to dwell too exclusively upon its errors and deficiencies; to forget that we see it in the light of history,—in the light of the Constitution; that some of its errors were such as time only could reveal, some of its deficiencies were such as nothing but a stern experience could induce us to sup

*The first movement towards a confederation had been made in July, 1775, by Franklin, ever foremost in the just apprecia tion of circumstar ces.

ply. For to supply them required sacrifices, and, in some instances, the sacrifice of habits and prejudices which the popular mind clings to with singular tenacity. A correct estimate of it would require an examination, which we have not time for now, of the ideas which the publicists and statesmen of that day entertained concerning the nature and office of a confederation. A glance, however, I must give, though it will necessarily be a hasty one.

Alliances for particular purposes have been common from an early period of modern history. Du Mont and Rousset and De Martens have filled volumes with the record of minute stipulations made only to be broken, and perpetual friendships that hardly outlived the year of their formation. You have all read to satiety of family compacts, and quadruple alliances, and holy alliances. Of confederations, too, there have been notable examples in ancient and modern times; the Amphictyonic Council and Achæan League in Greece, familiar to the men of our Revolution through Rollin and Millot and Mably; in modern Europe the Germanic system, the United Netherlands, the Hanseatic League, something of confederacy in Poland, in Switzerland much more; all of them, when our Confederation was formed, still objects of living interest, full of suggestions, especially full of warnings. But we must not forget that there were fundamental distinctions between Americans

even the Americans of that day—and the people of these confederacies, especially of the ancient confederacies.

In ancient society the citizen was absorbed in the state. The legislators of antiquity treated the individual as an element in that collective dignity, power, and grandeur which was called Sparta, or Athens, or Rome. It was not from any consciousness of the dignity of his individual nature, of the dignity of humanity, that the citizen of the victorious Republic repelled insult and injury. But to inflict stripes upon him was to insult the majestic city; to put fetters on his limbs was to bind limbs that ought always to be free for the service of the state.

With Christianity came individual rights, as the necessary consequence of individual responsibilities; the right of deciding and acting for self in civil society, as a necessary consequence of the obligation to answer for self at the bar of God. In the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, the two ideas stood side by side; the citizen looked upon himself as individually merged in the state; but at brief and regular intervals that state had to be made over again, and he had an equal voice, and an equal hand, in doing it. And thus was established the dependence of the state upon its individual members; the responsibility of every citizen that held office to the citizens by whose votes and for whose protection he held it. The regular return of authority to the source whence it came,