Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/59

 operation, we could scarcely be called a Nation. We had neither prosperity at home, nor consideration abroad." Yet it was under the operation of the Confederation alone, that the People of the United States gloriously achieved their independence, after a long and bloody war, compared with which, all subsequent wars have been but as the pastimes of children. It was under the operation of this Confederation alone, that Treaties of Alliance, of Amity and Commerce, and of Peace, were contracted with many of the principal Powers of the World, with France, with the United Netherlands, with Sweden, with Prussia, with Great Britain, and with Morocco, which Treaties have served as the model of every other of the like kind that has since been concluded. But the conquest of Freedom and Independence at home, and the conclusion of such leagues with some of the most powerful nations upon the face of the earth, in the eye of this author, seem to prove only, that we had neither prosperity at home, nor consideration abroad. Let us not rob the dead, in order to deck the living. The old Confederation was the wisest system of that sort, which the wisdom of mankind had every produced; and but for a single circumstance, ascribable rather to the poverty of the people than to any defect in the system itself, it would probably have endured to the present day, a proud monument of the sagacity of its authors. Let those who prefer grandeur to liberty, decry it as they may, their objections apply equally to all Confederacies, and strike at the root of free government, wherever it may perchance spring up in a territory of much extent.

I agree with this author, when in this paragraph, he says, that under the operation of this Confederation, "we could scarcely be called a nation." But I wonder why the Articles of Confederation should have been cited by him, to prove, that by these the States had agreed to form on Nation, if this formation scarcely deserved a name. The first Nation, created by the People, the existence of which, he said, was announced in the Declaration of Independence, vanished under the "Presto Begone" of a magician who created a second Nation by the terms of this Confederation. By these it was then said, that the States "agreed, that they would collectively, form one Nation," for certain purposes. The first nation, when its character was developed by him, turned