no interregnum in which Anarchy might rear his ugly head, and destroy
existing forms and instincts of government. Unfortunately a genius for
undertaking a beneficent enterprise may lack opportunity of carrying
it out. The war to secure the permanence of the Government they were
trying to establish produced a delay in completing the frame, and
allowed the individual States to assume a headway and win the people
to an allegiance, which the Union has not yet fully overcome.

In the form of British colonies, the States were well-recognised units
before resistance to authority compelled the people to entrust the
common defence to an irregularly formed Continental Congress. To the
revolutionary central authority thus formed and acknowledged through
necessity, colony after colony had turned for advice as their governors
and other royal officials fled to escape popular vengeance. Over a
year before national Independence was declared, the Congress had advised
the colony of Massachusetts that she owed no fealty to a parliament
attempting to change her charter, or to a governor who would not abide
by the old compact. The people, therefore, were urged to select certain
representatives. They in turn were to choose a council to act until
a governor should be appointed by the King, who would consent to rule
justly. Similar advice given to the other colonies resulted in the
formation of State constitutions and the erection of State governments.
The States, in this peculiar manner, dated their existence from the
suggestion of the Central Government, made at a time when it itself
had not been regularly formed. In turn, the States were now to complete
the Central Government by confederating themselves under a written
document.

Great Britain, the mother country, had never possessed a written
constitution, or frame of government; but the colonies were planted