Thus in point of intellectual capacity the latter body was distinctly
inferior in 1783 to what it had been when first assembled nine years
earlier.
[Sidenote: Anarchical tendencies.]
The arrival of peace did not help the Congress, but made matters worse.
When the absolute necessity of presenting a united front to the common
enemy was removed, the weakness of the union was shown in many
ways that were alarming. The _sentiment_ of union was weak. In spite of
the community in language and institutions, which was so favourable to
union, the people of the several states had many local prejudices which
tended to destroy the union in its infancy. A man was quicker to
remember that he was a New Yorker or a Massachusetts man than that he
was an American and a citizen of the United States. Neighbouring states
levied custom-house duties against one another, or refused to admit into
their markets each other's produce, or had quarrels about boundaries
which went to the verge of war. Things grew worse every year until by
the autumn of 1786, when the Congress was quite bankrupt and most of the
states nearly so, when threats of secession were heard both in New
England and in the South, when there were riots in several states and
Massachusetts was engaged in suppressing armed rebellion, when people in
Europe were beginning to ask whether we were more likely to be seized
upon by France or reconquered piecemeal by Great Britain, it came to be
thought necessary to make some kind of a change.
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