overruling Providence which had so signally protected this country from
the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of
little more than half its present number, not only broke to pieces the
chains which were forging and the rod of iron that was lifted up, but
frankly cut asunder the ties which had bound them, and launched into an
ocean of uncertainty.

The zeal and ardor of the people during the Revolutionary war,
supplying the place of government, commanded a degree of order
sufficient at least for the temporary preservation of society. The
Confederation which was early felt to be necessary was prepared from
the models of the Batavian and Helvetic confederacies, the only
examples which remain with any detail and precision in history, and
certainly the only ones which the people at large had ever considered.
But reflecting on the striking difference in so many particulars
between this country and those where a courier may go from the seat of
government to the frontier in a single day, it was then certainly
foreseen by some who assisted in Congress at the formation of it that
it could not be durable.

Negligence of its regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if
not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals but in
States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences - universal
languor, jealousies and rivalries of States, decline of navigation and
commerce, discouragement of necessary manufactures, universal fall in
the value of lands and their produce, contempt of public and private
faith, loss of consideration and credit with foreign nations, and at
length in discontents, animosities, combinations, partial conventions,
and insurrection, threatening some great national calamity.