Times of civil trouble had now come, teeming with dangers hardly less than those which had beset the country ten years before. The Confederation, by which the States were united, was found too feeble a bond of union, and a still feebler means of concurrent action. It could resolve, legislate, and make requisitions upon the States; but had no power to effectuate its resolutions, laws, or requisitions. It could contract debts, but not lay taxes of any kind to pay them. It could declare war, but not raise armies to wage it. It could make treaties, but not so as to regulate commerce--perhaps the most frequent and important aim of treaties. Each State had the determining of its own scale of duties on imports; the power of coining money, and of emitting paper-money at pleasure: conflicting revenue-laws, therefore, and a disordered currency, made "confusion worse confounded." The public debt, incurred by the revolution, was unpaid. More than three hundred millions of continental paper money were unredeemed; and {184} having depreciated to the value of one dollar for every hundred, had ceased to circulate. Public credit was nearly at an end: private credit, by the frequent violation of contracts, was at an equally low ebb: the administration of civil justice was suspended, sometimes by the wilful delinquency of the courts, sometimes by state-laws, restraining their proceedings. Commerce, Agriculture, Manufactures--industry of every kind,--were crippled. "Laws suspending the collection of debts; insolvent laws; instalment laws; tender laws; and other expedients of a like nature, which, every reflecting man knew would only aggravate the evils, were familiarly adopted, or openly and boldly vindicated. Popular leaders, as well as men of desperate fortunes, availed themselves (as is usual on such occasions) of this agitating state of things to inflame the public mind, and to bring into public odium those wiser statesmen, who labored to support the public faith, and to preserve the inviolability of private contracts." To strengthen the arm of the general government, and invest it with larger powers over the commerce, the money, and the foreign and mutual relations of the States--was believed by most people to be the only remedy for these intolerable evils. Mr. Marshall concurred with Gen. Washington, Mr. Madison, and the majority of their countrymen, in approving of this remedy; and as a member of the State Legislature, advocated the call of a Convention, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Whether they should be so altered, as to increase materially the powers of the Federal Government--was a question which in most of the State Legislatures elicited strenuous debates; and no where more, than in the Legislature of Virginia. The men of this day have little idea, how strong were the gusts of discussion at that momentous period. "It is scarcely possible," says Judge Story, "to conceive the zeal, and even