Most important of all precedents, however, were the colonial forms of union. Beginning with the process of amalgamation which is to be observed in the history of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, proceeding through the history of the New England Confederation, “a consociation for mutual help and strength in all their future concernments,” through the history of the Albany Plan, the acts of the Stamp Act Congress, the Committees of Correspondence, the Continental Congress, and the Articles of Confederation, the student should be made to see that the Constitution of the United States is but the last step in a century and a half of political development. In the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England (Article 8), for instance, is to be found the germ of the constitutional provision for mutual rights of citizenship and for the return of fugitive slaves and criminals. In the Albany Plan we find at least two provisions which in later days were to be incorporated in the Federal Constitution: (1) that a single officer should be charged with the general administration of the affairs of the union, and (2) that representation should be proportional, not equal, among the members of the union. The study of the Articles of Confederation should, of course, be thorough and exhaustive. Too many teachers are content to leave their pupils with a hazy notion of the form of government submitted to the States in 1777 and finally adopted in 1781. Because so much is regularly said about the defects of the Articles, so much about the perfection of the Constitution, the teacher must be warned and warned again against the almost universal custom of belittling the importance of this instrument of government. With all its imperfections, it is nevertheless true, considering the troublous times during which it was in operation, and the spirit of separatism which existed among the States, that this earliest bond of union among the States served as a strong link without which the present Constitution would never have come into existence. Under these Articles, the States severally entered into “a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare.” They guaranteed that “the free inhabitants of each of these States ... shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States”; “that full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, etc., of every other State.” The provisions of the Articles concerning the three departments of government should also receive careful attention, especially the executive and judicial departments, because it is here that most high school students are left with exceedingly vague and inaccurate conceptions. A thorough analysis of the document will show that while there were abortive provisions for the creation of