Nearly seventy years were to elapse before Queen Victoria, who was as putty in the hands of her German husband, Prince Albert, rejoiced that she had restored the personal power of the British sovereign to a pitch it had not known since her grandfather George III.
The American Revolution had illustrated the fatal weakness of the Congress as an organ of government, and the Articles merely embodied the vagueness of the American people in regard to any real regime.

The Congress has been much derided for its shortcomings and its blunders, although in truth not so much the Congress, as those who made it, was to blame.

They had refused, in their timidity, to give it power to exercise control.

It might not compel or enforce obedience.

It did require General Washington during the war to furnish a regular report of his military actions and it put his suggestions on file where many of them grew yellow and dusty; but he might not strike, do that decisive act by which history is born.