United States, of a civil government, to guard and protect and
defend them all. On the contrary, that same assembly which issued
the Declaration of Independence, instead of continuing to act in the
name and by the authority of the good people of the United States,
had, immediately after the appointment of the committee to prepare
the Declaration, appointed another committee, of one member from
each colony, to prepare and digest the form of confederation to be
entered into between the colonies.

That committee reported on the twelfth of July, eight days after the
Declaration of Independence had been issued, a draft of articles of
confederation between the colonies. This draft was prepared by John
Dickinson, then a delegate from Pennsylvania, who voted against the
Declaration of Independence, and never signed it, having been
superseded by a new election of delegates from that State, eight
days after his draft was reported.

There was thus no congeniality of principle between the Declaration
of Independence and the articles of confederation. The foundation of
the former was a superintending Providence--the rights of man, and
the constituent revolutionary power of the people. That of the
latter was the sovereignty of organized power, and the independence
of the separate or dis-united States. The fabric of the Declaration
and that of the confederation were each consistent with its own
foundation, but they could not form one consistent, symmetrical
edifice. They were the productions of different minds and of adverse
passions; one, ascending for the foundation of human government to
the laws of nature and of God, written upon the heart of man; the
other, resting upon the basis of human institutions, and
prescriptive law, and colonial charter. The corner stone of the one