In a word, the States were everything, the Confederation nothing. The powers of the latter were, like poor pine boards, filled with nots. The Confederation could not, of itself, levy taxes; it could only cipher up what each State ought to pay, and then advise it to pay the sum stated. It could not raise an army; and, amid the extra jealousy against a military force, it was hardly suffered to figure out the quotas of the various States which might, if they saw fit, follow the advice, or might, if they chose, disregard it. Of course the States generally treated these debiting bills as any customer would a draft upon him, when accompanied by an intimation that, although payment was desirable to the writer, he, the correspondent, might pay or not, as and when he found it convenient. Without trembling as Felix did, they adopted the Roman governor’s mode of dealing with unpalatable advice,—thoughts and suggestions of a judgment to come being postponed to a time which, rainbow-like, never touched them. The Confederation had no power over exports or imports, or the revenue therefrom; the States sitting along the sea-shore, keeping each its own straw to suck its private fill from the large maritime bowl in front of it. It had no authority to punish treason, as the States considered it no crime to hurt or maltreat the poor manikin which they had set up. It could not even collect more postage on letters than was barely necessary to defray the expenses of carrying the mails. As for the franking privilege, that curious Congressional levy on the public treasury, comically supposed to be repaid to the people by heavy speeches, very uncurrent and untransportable, which require all the government levers to lift them up to the unwilling hands of their constituents, this privilege was as yet undiscovered. There was one prohibition which might, in our time, with great advantage to the public interests, be even extended; the interdict upon men going to Congress more than three years out of six. Even the three years might be profitably prohibited,—an economy of bad laws, bad speeches, bad manners, and of $1,635,000 annually paid for salaries. It is noteworthy, however, that among the stark cold negations of the Confederation act, there were two warm affirmative provisions, one securing to persons of every color equal rights in all the States, the other making each man’s conscience the teacher and judge of his religious belief. These were the two red currents, the arterial blood, which kept alive the lumpish, footless, armless, and eyeless grub, and preserved it during the Revolution, and through the caterpillar, chrysalis condition from 1783 to 1787, until at last, in the latter year, it burst forth into the glad, beautiful, perfected butterfly, the Constitution, vital with sustaining power, bright with yellow promises, and rising joyously into the large air of healthy freedom.