contracting parties to comply with theirs. The government made a call
upon the States to raise $8,000,000 for the most vital needs, but only
$400,000 was actually received. Then Congress asked the States to vest
in it the power to levy a tax of five per cent, on imports for a limited
period, but, after waiting two years for the action of the States, less
than nine concurred. The States were then asked to pledge their own
internal revenue for twenty-five years to meet the national
indebtedness, but this could only be done by unanimous consent, and
while twelve States concurred, Rhode Island refused and the measure was
defeated. It was again the infinite folly of the _liberum veto_ which,
prior to the great partition, condemned Poland to chronic anarchy.

The impotence of the new government, which was still sitting in
Philadelphia, can be measured by the fact that on June 9, 1783, word
came that eighty soldiers were on their way to Philadelphia to demand
relief. They stacked their arms in front of the State House, where the
Congress was then sitting, and refused to disband, when requested by
Col. Alexander Hamilton, as the representative of the Congress, to do
so. When Congress appealed to the government of Pennsylvania for
protection, it was advised that the Pennsylvania militia was likewise
insubordinate. The Congress then hastily fled by night and became a
fugitive.

The impotence of the Confederation can be measured by the fact that in
the last fourteen months of its existence its receipts were less than
$400,000, while the interest on the foreign debt alone was over
$2,400,000, and the interest on the internal debt was five-fold greater.

In the absence of any government and in the period of general
prostration it was not unnatural that the spirit of Bolshevism grew with