Presbyteri Catholics ganized their government in a general assembly, which was also attended by Congregationalist delegates from New England in the capacity of simple advisers. The theological difference between these two sects was so slight that an alliance grew up between them, and outside of New England their names have come to be inaccurately used as if synonymous.1 Such a difference seemed to vanish when confronted with the newer differences that began to spring up soon after the close of the Revolution. The revolt against the doctrine ans; Roman of eternal punishment was already beginning in New England, and among the learned and thoughtful clergy of Massachusetts the seeds of Unitarianism were germinating. The gloomy intolerance of an older time was beginning to yield to more enlightened views. In 1789 the first Roman Catholic church in New England was dedicated in Boston. So great had been the prejudice against this sect that in 1784 there were only 600 Catholics in all New England. In the four southernmost states, on the other hand, there were 2500; in New York and New Jersey there were 1700; in Delaware and Pennsylvania there were 7700; in Maryland there were 20,000; while among the French settlements along the eastern bank of 1 Even in Connecticut I have heard Congregationalists called Presbyterians, but never in Massachusetts. the Mississippi there were supposed to be nearly 12,000. In 1786 John Carroll, a cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was selected by the Pope as his apostolic vicar, and was afterward successively made bishop of Baltimore and archbishop of the United States. By 1789 all obstacles to the Catholic worship had been done away with in all the states. In this brief survey of the principal changes wrought in the several states by the separation from England, one cannot fail to be struck with their conservative character. Things proceeded just as they had done from time immemorial with the English race. Forms of government were modified just far enough to adapt them to the new situation and no farther. The abolition of entails, of primogeniture, and of such few manorial privileges as existed, were useful reforms of far less sweeping character than similar changes would have been in England; and they were accordingly effected with ease. Even the abolition of slavery in the northern states, where negroes were few in number and chiefly employed in domestic service, wrought nothing in the remotest degree resembling a social revolution. But nowhere was this constitutionally cautious and precedent-loving mode of proceeding more thoroughly exemplified than in the measures just related, whereby the Episcopal and Methodist churches were separated from Except in the instance of lavery, all these changes the English establishment and placed upon an independent footing in the new world. From another point of view it may be observed that all these changes, except in the instance of slavery, tended to assimilate the states to one another in their political and social condition. So far as they went, these changes were favourable to union, -and this was perhaps especially true in the case of the ecclesiastical bodies, which brought citizens of different states into coöperation in pursuit of specific ends in common. were favourable to union At the same time this survey most forcibly reminds us how completely the legislation which immediately affected the daily domestic life of the citizen was the legislation of the single state in which he lived. In the various reforms just passed in review the United States government took no part, and could not from the nature of the case. Even to-day our national government has no power over such matters, and it is to be hoped it never will have. But at the present day our national government performs many important functions of common concern, which a century ago were scarcely performed at all. The organization of the single state was old in principle and well understood by everybody. It therefore worked easily, and such changes as those above described were brought about with little friction. On the other hand, the princi ples upon which the various relations of the states to each other were to be adjusted were not well understood. There was wide disagreement upon the subject, and the attempt to compromise between opposing views was not at first successful. Hence, in the management of affairs which concerned the United States as a nation, we shall not find the central machinery working smoothly or quietly. We are about to traverse a period of uncertainty and confusion, in which it required all the political sagacity and all the good temper of the people to save the half-built ship of state from going to pieces on the rocks of civil contention. III THE LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP T HAT some kind of union existed between the states was doubted by no one. Ever since the assembling of the first Continental Congress in 1774 the thirteen commonwealths had acted in concert, and sometimes most generously, as when Maryland and South Carolina had joined in the Declaration of Independence without any crying grievances of their own, from a feeling that the cause of one should be the cause of all. It has sometimes been said. that the Union was in its origin a league of sovereign states, each of which surrendered a specific portion of its sovereignty to the federal government for the sake of the common welfare. Grave political arguments had been based upon this alleged fact, but such an account of the matter is not historically true. There never was a time when Massachusetts or Virginia was an absolutely sovereign state like Holland or France. Sovereign over their own internal affairs they are to-day as they were at the time of the Revolution, but there was never a time when they presented themselves before other |