Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/60

However, with such a system, independence was achieved, but at such a cost of personal suffering, life, and individual pecuniary ruin, as, while it almost staggers credulity, should enshrine in our hearts' best affections, the memory of our patient and heroic fathers. And beside this cost of life and property to individuals, there was also a debt, due from the United States to creditors at home and abroad, which may safely be stated at not much less than fifty millions of dollars. The whole expense of the war had been about one hundred and thirty-five millions.

Impoverished, however, as was the country, the first subject that engaged the attention of the people, after emerging from the war, was the restoration of national credit, and the payment of this, to them, enormous debt. Congress did its part, in recommending taxes, or duties, distributed in just proportion among all the states, but it was utterly powerless to levy the taxes, or enforce the payment of the duties. The insufficiency of the articles of confederation, as a system of government, became every day more and more apparent. There was no longer the pressure of a common danger, and the oppressive hand of tyranny had been shaken off; and these were the causes which had given strength to the bonds of the federal union. The minds of the wisest and best men were filled with gloomy apprehensions and sad forebodings. The enemies of the Revolution, both at home and abroad, had predicted that the success of America would prove her ruin, for that she was incapable of governing herself; and they were now secretly rejoicing in the prospect of a speedy fulfilment of their predictions. Many true men almost despaired of the commonwealth. Washington, in 1784, wrote: "The disinclination of the individual states to yield competent powers to Congress for the federal government, their unreasonable jealousy of that body, and of one another, and the disposition which seems to pervade each of being all-