_Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, pp. 254, 275. Massachusetts, however, had no interest in the quarrel. The lands she coveted did not lie in that direction, and she professed to be unable to go to war save in a just cause.[580] Her moral stand might be considered more sincere, were it not for the quite contrary position she consistently assumed when her own interests were at stake. Her refusal, however, undoubtedly prevented an act of great injustice, although her action permanently weakened the Confederacy; for she claimed, in spite of the obvious intention of the Articles, that the Commissioners had no power to declare an offensive, but only a defensive, war. This unwarranted construction was bitterly opposed by the other three members, who properly claimed that, if any of the colonies had the right, on occasion, to alter the Articles to suit herself, then the league must necessarily “breake and bee dissolved.” “Whether this violation proceed from some unwarrantable Scruple of Conscience or from some other engagement of sperit,” they wrote, “the Massachusetts neither expresse, nor will the Commissioners determine.”[581] In the wilderness, men come to know one another well; and her neighbors' faith in the Bay Colony's purity of motive had been too often sorely tried to permit them, perhaps, to do her entire justice. War was declared in September, seven of the eight Commissioners voting in favor of it, although Massachusetts refused to be bound.[582] Her interpretation of the Articles having been vehemently denied by the western colonies, she turned to Plymouth, but failed to overawe her little neighbor, who bluntly answered that the Articles “are so full and plaine that they occation not any such queries.”[583] Footnote 580: _Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, pp. 56, 75, 80, 86. Footnote 581: _Acts United Colonies_, vol. II, p. 82. Footnote 582: _Ibid._, pp. 102, 108 _f._ Footnote 583: _Ibid._, pp. 111 _f._