Great Britain since the fathers of Virginia and Massachusetts left home.
Nor did it include--and this was of great importance in its influence on
the form of the Constitution--any real understanding of or any aptitude
for the English Parliamentary Government, under which the leaders of the
legislative body and the advisers of the Crown in its executive functions
are the same men, and under which the elected persons, presumed for the
moment to represent the people, are allowed for that moment an almost
unfettered supremacy.

Thus there was much that made it easy for the Colonies to combine in the
single act of repudiating British sovereignty, yet the characteristics
which may be ascribed to them in common were not such as inclined them or
fitted them to build up a great new unity.

The Colonies, however, backed up by the British Government with the
vigour which Chatham imparted to it, had acted together against a common
danger from the French. When the States, as we must now call them, acted
together against the British Government they did so in name as "United
States," and they shortly proceeded to draw up "Articles of Confederation
and Perpetual Union." But it was union of a feeble kind. The separate
government of each State, in its internal affairs, was easy to provide
for; representative institutions always existed, and no more change was
needed than to substitute elected officers for the Governors and
Councillors formerly appointed by the Crown. For the Union a Congress
was provided which was to represent all the States in dealings with the
outside world, but it was a Government with no effective powers except
such as each separate State might independently choose to lend it. It
might wage war with England, but it could not effectually control or
regularly pay the military service of its own citizens; it might make a
treaty of peace with England, but it could not enforce on its citizens