themselves. The unanimous consent required by the Articles to make any
amendment blocked these and all other proposed reforms. Sometimes
twelve States would agree, but before the thirteenth could be won over,
another would withdraw its consent. On one occasion, when Rhode Island
alone held out, her delegates in Congress wrote to the governor of the
State that their "reasonable and firm stand against the all-grasping
hand of power in the case of duties had saved the United States!"
Connecticut protested that such an addition to the functions of Congress
as the collection of an impost would at one stroke vest that body with
the power of the sword and the purse, and leave nothing of the
individual States but an empty name. Others argued that with 320 million
acres of land, which would bring an average of at least one dollar an
acre, the General Government needed no other source of revenue.
Unanimous consent to an amendment could never be secured. This was the
lesson taught by the attempts.

Aside from the difficulties arising from the defects of the
Confederation experiment, the disorders in the national body were
simply reflections of the turbulent spirit prevalent at the time.
Suddenly emerged from the restraining hand of a mother country,
misinterpreting the meaning of independence, confounding liberty with
license, having lost the law-abiding sense in the treatment of the
Tories, grown only too accustomed to the pleasures of mob law, the
people were passing through the reassembling period which always follows
a civil war. Peace is the normal condition of a people; war is the
abnormal. Restraint, taxation, and obedience, it was supposed, had
passed away with royalty and kingly prerogative. "Taxes and relaxed
government agree but ill," observed the laconic Jay. From South
Carolina, Edward Rutledge wrote to him, "It is really very curious to
observe how the people of this world are made the dupes of a word.