Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/213

 JAMES MADISON 173 suffered under the articles of confederation. The weakness of that government had consisted in the fact that it operated only upon states and not upon individuals. Only states, not individuals, were rep resented in the Continental congress, which accord ingly resembled a European congress rather than an English parliament. The delegates to the Con tinental congress were more like envoys from sovereign states than like members of a legislative body. They might deliberate and advise, but had no means of enforcing their will upon the several state governments; and hence they could neither raise a revenue nor preserve order. In forming the new government, this fundamental difficulty was met first by the creation of a legislative body repre senting population instead of states, and secondly by the creation of a Federal executive and a Fed eral judiciary. Thus arose that peculiar state of things so familiar to Americans, but so strange to Europeans that they find it hard to comprehend it: the state of things in which every individual lives under two complete and well-rounded systems of laws the state law and the Federal law each with its legis lature, its executive, and its judiciary, moving one within the other. It was one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship ever known in the world, and the credit of it is due to Madison more than to any other one man. To him we chiefly;