those military dictators of old - the Prætorian Guards of the soldier-made Cæsars of Rome. The Lancaster revolt of the same year which actually did drive Congress in terror from its chambers and well-nigh upset the government itself was another mistaken act on the part of the discontented soldiers.

These mutterings of discontent ran through several years and were only finally settled by the issue of Continental certificates for the payment of the soldiers' claims. These paper promises to pay, however, were not money. Their value was almost fictitious, and many a poor soldier who had fought for the liberty of the land, when pressed for the very necessities of life, was forced to dispose of these Continental certificates at a ruinous sacrifice- sometimes as low as one sixth of their value.

But the war was over and the army was disbanded. In June, 1784, eighty men represented all that remained of the army of the Congress. Of this number twenty-five were detailed for service at Fort Pitt on the Ohio frontier and fifty-five guarded the almost useless munitions of war at West Point. Sturdy old General Lincoln, the Secretary of War, found himself with no army to direct and retired to private life.

And yet it was evident that soldiers were a necessity. The undefended frontier on the north and west demanded attention. Congress, however, had no power to maintain a standing army in time of peace and when a motion was made to create such an army, even though limited to a few hundred men, so loud was the cry against it by those who deemed it a menace to the liberties of the people that, as a compromise, the several States. were invited by Congress to raise their own armies for their own defense. Action was taken on this suggestion, and on the third of June, 1784, an ordinance was passed recommending to the States of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Penn

sylvania that they raise between them a force of seven hundred men to garrison their frontiers for one year.

When, finally, the Constitution of the United States became the law of the land there existed, in the year 1788, a United States army of the magnificent proportions of five hundred and ninety-five men and two companies of artillery numbering seventy-one non-commissioned officers and privates. These soldiers of the union were distributed among the few military posts kept up by Congress. A small number were stationed at West Point; the remainder were on duty at certain of the stockaded forts in the Western country.

The early years of the new nation were years of disturbance and discontent. People scarcely knew what was to be the character of the government under which they were to live. Until the adoption of the Constitution the several States were leagued together only by a half-way sort of mutual consent that was as brittle and uncertain a bond as would be a rope of sand. Even within the States themselves the law-makers of each commonwealth found themselves at variance with the very people they were elected to represent. Discontent not unfrequently flamed out into real rebellion, mobs and riots were of common occurrence and those who had stood in the ranks of liberty were often all too ready to side with the malcontents and fight against the very authority they had helped to create.

Disturbances growing out of the question of the rightful ownership and occupation of land often developed into actual bloodshed and those who had fought side by side on the battlefields of the Revolution found themselves facing each other, hot and angry, in the strife for possession. One of these interdisturbances was the attempt by Pennsylvania in 1784 to m its hill country about the Wyoming certain families.

from the East who had settled there under the disputed Connecticut grants. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania fancying its rights invaded by the coming of these "Yankee" settlers sent detachments from their State army to drive away these old-time "boomers." Coming upon the settlers when floods and fearful weather had well-nigh disheartened them, the Pennsylvania militia, led first by the mean-spirited lawyer Patterson and next by the stern old soldier Armstrong, harried the settlers with fire and with sword and dealt with them as ruthlessly and almost as brutally as had the Tories of Butler and the Indians of Brant in that historic foray that has made the massacre of Wyoming one of the saddest pictures in the Revolutionary story. But brutality found its Nemesis. Among the settlers were men who knew what it meant to fight; and fight they did. At last even the laws of the State stepped in to put a stop to the brutality of Patterson and the treachery of Armstrong, and when these two leaders attempted to resist the authority of the State, they fell before the righteous though eleventh-hour indignation of an awakened people.

It was in the line of similar protests against authority and law that the "military operations" of the troops of discontent. were conducted during the years that succeeded the close of the Revolution. Uncertain as to their corporate standing, slowly feeling their way toward a solid footing among the nations of the earth, the people of the newly-united States. made many mistakes of judgment, many lapses into faction.

Quick to criticise and all too ready to coin their objections. into threats those among the masses who felt themselves unjustly treated by the acts of their own law-makers-"the servants of the people". were quickly roused to rebel against the constituted authority and to dictate where they should

submit. It took long years of harsh experience for the people of the United States to yield unquestionably to the will of the majority.

Out of such unsettled conditions and from such popular protests came much trouble and no little use for the fastrusting muskets of the Revolution. One of the earliest, as one of the most serious of these disturbances was that known as Shays' Rebellion.

This celebrated rising grew out of questions as to the proprietorship of land, out of the pressure of the hard times, the unwise exactions of those who held claims for money due, the weaknesses of certain laws enacted and especially the attempt, in Massachusetts, to levy State and federal taxes.

In the "ranks of the poor" were many who had been soldiers in the Continental Army. The revolt drew to its support numbers of people in Western Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, Vermont, and even in Eastern New York. The leader was Captain Daniel Shays. He was a man who had seen service in the Revolution and the malcontents who put themselves under his command were speedily drilled into some semblance of military discipline. But an armed mob is much like a pirate crew. Both are outlaws and all attempts at discipline or authority are rated only at second-hand. Leadership is an uncertain quantity. Number One is always the main consideration. So, when the army of Massachusetts, forty-four hundred strong and marshaled by stout old General Lincoln, put itself in motion and actually faced the malcontents in fight the mutinous spirit speedily yielded to the organized forces of Law. There was much threatening and bluster, no little show of resistance, and some fighting, even; but the determination of Lincoln and his militia carried the day

and saved not alone the State of Massachusetts but the entire confederation of States from what might have been a disastrous and suicidal popular sentiment.

It is in dealing with the troops of discontent that real discipline best exhibits itself. To be stern and unyielding when occasion demands, to be lenient and forgiving when superiority is once established - this is the only course that wins in all encounters with mobs.

When Shays at the head of two thousand men marched upon the arsenal at Springfield the commandant, General

Shepard, thinking to frighten the invaders ordered his men to fire in the air. But the rebel ranks contained too many old soldiers who had smelled powder on real battle-fields and Shepard only recovered from his mistake by an actual and disastrous volley. When General Cobb, an old Revolutionary officer, was menaced by the rioters at Taunton where he was holding court as judge he faced them without an instant's delay