The Constitution of the United States was eminently the creature of circumstances;--not of circumstances blindly leading the blind to an unconscious submission to an accident, but of circumstances which offered an intelligent choice of the means of happiness, and opened, from the experience of the past, the plain path of duty and success, stretching onward to the future. All that has been said in the previous chapters tends to illustrate this fact. We have seen the American people,--divided into separate and isolated communities, without nationality, except such as resulted from a general community of origin,--undertaking together the work of throwing off the domination of their parent state. We have seen them enter upon this undertaking without forming any political bond of a national character, and without instituting any proper national agency. We have seen, that the first government which they created was, practically, a mere general council for the recommendation of measures to be adopted and executed by the several constituencies represented. We have seen no machinery instituted for the accomplishment, by the combined authority of these separate communities, of the great objects at which they were aiming; and although in theory the Revolutionary Congress would have been entitled to assume and exercise the powers necessary to accomplish the objects for which it was assembled, we have seen that the people of the country, from a jealous and unreasonable fear of all power, would not permit this to be done. The consequences of this want of power were inevitable. An army could not be kept in the field, on a permanent footing, capable of holding the enemy in check. The city of New York fell into the hands of that enemy, the intermediate country between that city and the city of Philadelphia was overrun, and from the latter capital, the seat of the general government, the Congress was obliged to fly before the invading foe.