over the snows by their bleeding, unshod feet, was not due to lack of
clothing and provisions, but to the gross incapacity of a headless
government that if it had had the wisdom to act lacked the authority.
The situation was one of chaos. The colonies recruited their own
contingents, paid such taxes as they pleased, which grew increasingly
less, and the Congress had no coercive power to enforce its policies,
either with reference to internal or external affairs. This situation
was so clearly recognized that immediately after the Declaration of
Independence on July 4, 1776, the draft of a constitution was proposed
to give the central government more effective power; but, although the
necessity was manifest and most urgent, the so-called Articles of
Confederation, which were then drafted in 1776, were never finally
adopted by the requisite number of States until March, 1781, when the
war was nearly over. As the result proved, they marked only a very small
advance over the existing _de facto_ government, for the constituent
States were still too jealous of each other and too hostile to the
creation of a central government to form a truly effective government.
The founders of the Republic could only learn from their errors, but it
is their great merit that they had the ability to profit in the stern
school of experience, of which Franklin has said that it is a "dear
school, but fools will learn in no other."

The founders of the Republic were not fools, and while they did not, as
Gladstone seems to intimate, have the inspired wisdom to develop a
wonderful Constitution by sheer intuition unaided by experience, they
did have the ability to make of their very errors the stepping-stones to
a higher destiny.

By the Articles of Confederation, which, as stated, became effective in
1781, the conduct of foreign affairs was vested in the new government,