Yet we are right in never thinking of the Great Man first as a soldier, he was so much besides. Washington's consummate intellectual trait was sound judgment, only matched by the magnificent balance which subsisted between his mental and his moral powers. "George had always been a good son," his mother said. Nature had endowed him with intense passions and ambitions, but neither could blind him or swerve him one hair from the line of rectitude as he saw it. And he made painful and unremitting effort to see it and see it correctly. He was approachable, but repelled familiarity, and whoever attempted this was met with a perfectly withering look. He rarely laughed, and he was without humor, though he wrote and conversed well. He had the integrity of Aristides. His account with Congress while general shows scrupulousness to the uttermost farthing. To subordinate, to foe, even to malicious plotters against him, he was almost guiltily magnanimous. He loved popularity, yet, if conscious that he was right, would face public murmuring with heart of flint. Became the most famous man alive, idolized at home, named by every tongue in Europe, praised by kings and great ministers, who compared him with Caesar, Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great, his head swam not, but with steadfast heart and mind he moved on in the simple pursuit of his country's weal. "In Washington's career," said Fisher Ames, "mankind perceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the splendor of power, and even the name of conqueror had grown dim in their eyes." Lord Erskine wrote him: "You are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence." "Until time shall be no more," said Lord Brougham, "will a test of the progress which our race has made in Wisdom and Virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington." And Mr. Gladstone: "If among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, my choice would light upon WASHINGTON." [Footnote: See Winthrop's Oration for these and other encomia.] CHAPTER IX. THE OLD CONFEDERATION [1781] The Revolutionary Congress was less a government than an exigency committee. It had no authority save in tacit general consent. Need of an express and permanent league was felt at an early date. Articles of Confederation, framed by Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, were adopted by Congress in November, 1777. They were then submitted to the State Legislatures for ratification. By the spring of 1779 all the States but Maryland had given their approval. Upon the accession of the latter, on March 1, 1781, the articles went into effect at once.