Men were most unwillingly brought to this conclusion, because they were used to their state assemblies and not afraid of them, but they were afraid of increasing the powers of any government superior to the states, lest they should thus create an unmanageable tyranny.  They believed that even anarchy, though a dreadful evil, is not so dreadful as despotism, and for this view there is much to be said.  After no end of trouble a convention was at length got together at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and after four months of work with closed doors, it was able to offer to the country the new Federal Constitution.  Both in its character and in the work which It did, this Federal Convention, over which Washington presided, and of which Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton were members, was one of the most remarkable deliberative bodies known to history.

We have seen that the fundamental weakness of the Continental Congress lay in the fact that it could not tax the people.  Hence although it could for a time exert other high functions of sovereignty, it could only do so while money was supplied to it from other sources than taxation; from contributions made by the states in answer to its “requisitions,” from foreign loans, and from a paper currency.  But such resources could not last long.  It was like a man’s trying to live upon his own promissory notes and upon gifts and unsecured loans from his friends.  When the supply of money was exhausted, the Congress soon found that it could no longer comport itself as a sovereign power; it could not preserve order at home, and the situation abroad may be illustrated by the fact that George III. kept garrisons in several of our northwestern frontier towns and would not send a minister to the United States.  This example shows that, among the sovereign powers of a government, the power of taxation is the fundamental one upon which all the others depend.  Nothing can go on without money.

But the people of the several states would never consent to grant the power of taxation, to such a body as the Continental Congress, in which they were not represented.  The Congress was not a legislature, but a diplomatic body; it did not represent the people, but the state governments; and a large state like Pennsylvania had no more weight in it than a little state like Delaware.  If there was to be any central assembly for the whole union, endowed with the power of taxation, it must be an assembly representing the American people just as the assembly of a single state represented the people of the state.

As soon as this point became clear, it was seen to be necessary to throw the Articles of Confederation overboard, and construct a new national government.  As was said above, our Federal Congress is not descended from the Continental Congress.  Its parentage is to be sought in the state legislatures.  Our federal government was constructed after the general model of the state governments, with some points copied from British usages, and some points that were original and new.