The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. In response to this and other problems, Congress came together in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention.AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The war had put America in severe in debt, but the states weren't volunteering to pay up and Congress couldn't madate them to do so. One of the biggest issues was that the new country didn't have a stable currency. ![]() Under the Articles of Confederation, the states all had their own forms of government and congress had very little power. ![]() In 1781, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation as the framework for the newly-formed United States government. In a federalist system the central government and the states beneath it each have separate areas of responsibility and the states can make their own laws as long as they are in accordance with the laws set by the central authority. International Climate Change Agreementsįederalism is a system of governance which is composed of a strong central authority and weaker, yet not powerless, subordinate states.Slavery and the Constitutional Convention. ![]() Philosophy of the Declaration of Independence.
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