" The soundness of the view is only equaled by the accuracy
of the prediction. He might five years later have repeated this
sentence, word for word, only altering the tenses, and he would have
rehearsed exactly the course of events.
While he wrote thus he keenly watched Congress, and marked its sure
and not very gradual decline. He did what he could to bring about
useful measures, and saw them one after the other come to naught. He
urged the impost scheme, and felt that its failure was fatal to the
financial welfare of the country, on which so much depended. He
always was striving to do the best with existing conditions, but the
hopelessness of every effort soon satisfied him that it was a waste of
time and energy. So he turned again in the midst of his canal schemes
to renew his exhortations to leading men in the various States on the
need of union as the only true solution of existing troubles.
To James McHenry, of Maryland, he wrote in August, 1785: "I confess to
you candidly that I can foresee no evil greater than disunion; than
those unreasonable jealousies which are continually poisoning our
minds and filling them with imaginary evils for the prevention of real
ones." To William Grayson of Virginia, then a member of Congress,
he wrote at the same time: "I have ever been a friend to adequate
congressional powers; consequently I wish to see the ninth article of
the confederation amended and extended. Without these powers we cannot
support a national character, and must appear contemptible in the eyes
of Europe.
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