“On the 11th of June, congress appointed a committee to prepare a plan of confederation. And the plan, reported by the committee in the following July, was, after various changes, finally adopted by congress on the 15th of November, 1777. Various causes, the principal of which was a difference of opinion respecting the disposition of the vacant western lands, prevented the immediate ratification of these articles by all the states; but at length those states which claimed the western lands having ceded them to the Union for the common benefit of the whole, the articles of confederation were ratified by Maryland, the last remaining state, on the 1st of March, 1781, at which time they became the constitution of the country. “The confederation, however, amounted to little more than a mere league of friendship between the states; for although it invested congress with many of the powers of sovereignty, it was defective as a permanent government, owing to the want of means to enforce its decrees. While the states were bound together by a sense of common danger, the evils of the plan were little noticed; but after the close of the war they became so prominent as to make a revision of the system necessary.” CHAPTER VII. REVOLUTIONARY WAR (_continued_), 1778. Let us now see the effect of the war so far, both in the mother-country and America. The surrender of Burgoyne’s army caused a great sensation in England, and efforts were immediately made in several of the large Scotch and English towns to send out troops to supply the loss; in London also, where the progress of the war had raised an anti-American spirit, £20,000 was raised by subscription for that purpose. On the other hand, subscriptions were also raised to relieve the American prisoners, who, from the cupidity and heartlessness of those in whose hands they were placed, were suffering from the want of the very necessaries of life. When parliament met in January of this year, the American war was the first and most important topic of discussion, and Burke and the Duke of Richmond, Lord North, and the whole of the Rockingham party, entered more or less into the advocacy of the colonies. As to the war itself, the loss of life it had occasioned, the enormous expenses which it had entailed, and the hopelessness of its results, formed a strong argument in the mouths of all reasonable men. Still the war-party was strong, and Burgoyne could neither obtain an audience from the king nor get a hearing in parliament. To increase the inveteracy of feeling also, congress appeared ready to evade the terms of the convention of Saratoga. On some plea of suspicion regarding the intentions of the British officers who objected to the troops embarking at Boston, and had ordered the transports for their conveyance to Rhode Island instead, they were detained in the country as prisoners of war.