Excerpt from The World's Great Events, Vol. 6: An Indexed History of the World From Earliest Times to the Present Day; From A. D. 1776 to A. D. 1848 The first draft Of the Declaration of Inde pendence and the desk upon which it was com posed are religiously preserved. We know how and by whom every joist and rafter was set into our later Constitution. But how the Articles of Confederation were prepared, few ask and none can positively answer; nor has any one Claimed to be their author. Its draft, to be sure, was made out by Dickinson, who was prominent in the committee; but much of that committee work must have been cut to order. As a framework Of government this plan was no better than a makeshift; an effort to pare Off slices of State sovereignty without diminishing the loaf; to circumscribe Circum scription; to set centralism in motion with one hand and stop it with the other. That such a union could be, as the scheme professed, perpetual, was impossible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.