be held at Philadelphia _for the sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation_ and reporting to Congress
and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein
as shall, _when agreed to in Congress_ and conformed to by the
States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigency of
the government and the preservation of the union."

It will be noted by the italicized portions of the resolution that this
impotent body thus vainly attempted to cling to the shadow of its
vanished authority by stating that the proposed constitutional
convention should merely revise the worthless Articles of Confederation
and that such amendments should not have validity until adopted by
Congress as well as by the people of the several States. How this
mandate was disregarded and how the convention was formed, and
proceeded to create a new government with a new Constitution, and how
it achieved its mighty work, will be the subject of the next lecture.

Anticipating the masterly ability with which a seemingly impotent and
dying nation plucked from the nettle of danger the flower of safety, let
me conclude this first address by quoting the words of de Tocqueville,
in his remarkable work _Democracy in America_, where he says:

"The Federal Government, condemned to impotence by its Constitution
and no longer sustained by the presence of common danger ... was
already on the verge of destruction when it officially proclaimed
its inability to conduct the government and appealed to the
constituent authority of the nation.... It is a novelty in the
history of a society to see a calm and scrutinizing eye turned upon
itself, when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of
government are stopped; to see it carefully examine the extent of