.

THE UNION ESTABLISHED.
The course of English history shops that Anglo-Saxon tradition is strongly in favor of observing precedents and of trying to maintain at least the form of law, even in revolutions.

When the English people found it impossible to bear with James II and made it so uncomfortable for him that he fled the country, they shifted the responsibility from their own shoulders by charging him with "breaking the original Contract between King and People." When the Thirteen Colonies had reached the point where they felt that they must separate from England, their spokesman, Thomas Jefferson, found the necessary justification in the fundamental compact of the first settlers "in the wilds of America" where "the emigrants thought proper to adopt that system of laws under which they had hitherto lived in the mother country"; and in the Declaration of Independence he charged the King of Great Britain with "repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." And so it was with the change to the new form of government in the United States, which was accomplished only by disregarding the forms prescribed in the Articles of Confederation and has been called, therefore, "the Revolution of 1789." From the outset the new constitution was placed under the sanction of the old.

The movement began with an attempt, outwardly at least, to revise the Articles of Confederation and in that form was authorized by Congress.

The first breach with the past was made when the proposal in the Virginia Resolutions was accepted that amendments made by the Convention in the Articles of Confederation should be submitted to assemblies chosen by the people instead of to the legislatures of the separate States.