privileges granted by plenary Sovereignty, but as contractual
obligations which could be enforced in the Courts against the Sovereign.

All this developed in the colonists a powerful sense of constitutional
morality, and its pertinency to my present theme lies in the fact that
when each of the thirteen colonies became, at the conclusion of the War
of Independence, a separate and independent nation, they were more
concerned, in establishing a central government, to limit its authority
and to maintain local self-government than they were to give to the
new-born nation the powers which it needed. They carried their
constitutionalism to extremes, which nearly made a strong and efficient
central government an impossibility.

Nothing was less desired by them than a unified government. It was
destined to be wrung from their hard necessities. The Constitution was
the reflex action of two opposing tendencies, the one the imperative
need of an efficient central government, and the other the passionate
attachment to local self-rule. Co-operation between the colonies had
been a matter of long discussion and earnest debate, and primarily
resulted from the necessity of defence against a common foe the French
in Canada, and the Indians of the forest. In 1643 four of the New
England colonies united in a league to defend themselves. In 1693
William Penn made the first suggestion for a union of all the colonies.
In 1734 a council was held at Albany at the instance of the Crown to
provide the means for the defence against France in Canada, and it was
then that Franklin submitted the first concrete form for a union of the
colonies into a permanent alliance. It was in advance of the times, for,
conservative as it was, it was unfortunately opposed both by the Crown
and the colonies themselves.