being invited to offer suggestions,* answered: "The proposition is self-evident. We are either a united people or we are not so. If the former, let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation which has a national character to support."+ "If the states individually attempt to regulate commerce, an abortion or a many-headed monster would be the issue. If we consider ourselves or wish to be considered by others as a united people, why not adopt the measures which are characteristic of it, and support the honor and dignity of one? If we are afraid to trust one another under qualified powers, there is an end of the union." +

The house was disposed to confide to congress a power over trade; but, by the stratagem of the adversaries of the resolutions, the duration of the grant was limited to thirteen years. This limitation, which was reported on the last day of November, took from the movement all its value. "It is better," so wrote Madison to Washington, "to trust to further experience, and even distress, for an adequate remedy than to try a temporary measure which may stand in the way of a permanent one. The difficulty now found in obtaining a unanimous concurrence of the states in any measure must increase with every increase of their numbers." #

All was at a stand, when suddenly a ray of light was thrown upon the assembly by Maryland. On the fifth of December the adhesion of that state to the compact relating to the jurisdiction of the waters of Chesapeake bay and the Potomac was laid before Virginia, which without delay enacted a corresponding law of equal liberality and precision. The desire of Maryland was likewise announced to invite the concurrence of Delaware and Pennsylvania in a plan for a canal between the Chesapeake and the Delaware; "and if that is done," said Madison, "Delaware and Pennsylvania will wish the same compliment paid to their neighbors." But the immediate measure of Maryland was communicated in a letter from its legislature to the legislature of Virginia, proposing that com* David Stuart to Washington, 16 November 1785. + Sparks, ix., 145. 146.

Washington to Stuart, 30 November 1785.

# In Elliot, i.. 114, the resolutions as reported on the 30th November are published as Madison's; but they found in Madison their strongest opponent. Madison, i., 205, 206, and compare 203.

Hening, xii., 50, 55.

missioners from all the states should be invited to meet and regulate the restrictions on commerce for the whole.* Madison instantly saw the advantage of "a politico-commercial commission" for the continent.

Tyler, the late speaker of the house, " wished congress to have the" entire "regulation of trade." In concert with him, a resolution was drafted by Madison for the appointment of commissioners from Virginia and all the other states to digest a report for the requisite augmentation of the powers of congress over trade, their report to be of no force until it should be unanimously ratified by the several states. Madison kept in reserve. Tyler, who, having never served in the federal council, was free from every suspicion of inclining to grant it too much power, presented the resolution. It was suffered to lie on the table till the last day in the session; then, on the twenty-first of January 1786, it went through both branches of the legislature by a large majority. Among the commissioners who were chosen, Madison was the first selection on the part of the house. The commissioners named the first Monday of September for the day of their meeting, and Annapolis as the place, on account of its remoteness from the influences of congress and the centres of trade. The invitations to the states were made through the executive of Virginia.

On the twenty-second Madison wrote to Monroe: "The expedient is better than nothing; and, as a recommendation of additional powers to congress is within the purview of the commission, it may possibly lead to better consequences than at first occur." +

The sixth congress could not be organized until the twentythird of November 1785, when, seven states being present, David Ramsay of South Carolina was elected president. For the half of December not states enough were present to do business. So soon as there was a permanent quorum, it was agreed that the confederation had its vices, and the question of policy was: Shall these vices be corrected gradually through congress, or at once and completely through a convention? Just seventeen days after Virginia had invited the states to a *Stuart to Washington, 18 December 1785. Madison, i., 222.

common consultation at Annapolis, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, in a motion of very great length, ascribed the extension of the commerce and the security of the liberties of the states to the joint efforts of the whole: "They have, therefore," he insisted, "wisely determined to make the welfare of the union their first object, reflecting that in all federal regulations something must be yielded to aid the whole, and that those who expect support must be ready to afford it."* The motion, after being under discussion for two days, was referred to a committee of five. On the fifteenth, King, Pinckney, Kean, Monroe, and Pettit, representatives of South Carolina and the three great states, reported: "The requisitions of congress, for eight years past, have been so irregular in their operation, so uncertain in their collection, and so evidently unproductive, that a reliance on them in future as a source from whence moneys are to be drawn to discharge the engagements of the confederacy would be not less dishonorable to the understandings of those who entertain such confidence than dangerous to the welfare and peace of the union. The committee are, therefore, seriously impressed with the indispensable obligation that congress are under of representing to the immediate and impartial consideration of the several states the utter impossibility of maintaining and preserving the faith of the federal government by temporary requisitions on the states, and the consequent necessity of an early and complete accession of all the states to the revenue system of the eighteenth of April 1783." "After the most solemn deliberation, and under the fullest conviction that the public embarrassments are such as above represented, and that they are daily increasing, the committee are of opinion that it has become the duty of congress to declare most explicitly that the crisis has arrived when the people of these United States, by whose will and for whose benefit the federal government was instituted, must decide whether they will support their rank as a nation by maintaining the public faith at home and abroad; or whether, for want of a timely exertion in establishing a general revenue and thereby giving strength to the confederacy, they will hazard not only the existence of the union, but of those great and in

* Journals of Congress, iv., 617.

valuable privileges for which they have so arduously and so honorably contended." *

Thus congress put itself on trial before the country, and the result of the year was to decide on their competency to be the guardians of the union and the upholders of its good faith. They must either exercise negation of self and invite the states to call a general convention, or they must themselves present to the country for its approval an amended constitution, or they must find out how to make their own powers under the confederation work efficiently. Should they fail in all the three, they will have given an irreversible verdict against themselves. The course of events relating to the welfare of the whole was watched by the country more carefully than ever before. Far and wide a general convention was become the subject of thought; and "a plan for it was forming, though it was as yet immature." +

New Jersey, which had all along vainly sought the protection of the general government against the taxation of her people by a local duty levied on all their importations from abroad for their own consumption through the port of New York, at last kindled with a sense of her wrongs, and in a resentful mood, on the twentieth of October voted by a very large majority that she would pay no part of the last requisition of congress until all the states should have accepted the measure of an impost for the benefit of the general treasury. Alarmed at this movement, congress deputed Charles Pinckney, Gorham, and Grayson to represent to the legislature of New Jersey the fatal consequences that must inevitably result to that state and to the union from their refusal to comply with the requisition of the last congress. Grayson looked upon their vote as little else than a declaration of independence. Again Pinckney of South Carolina took the lead, and, in an address to the New Jersey legislature of the thirteenth of March, this was part of his language: "When these states united, convinced of the inability of each to support a separate system and that their protection and existence depended on their union, policy as well as prudence dictated the necessity of forming one general and efficient * Journals of Congress, iv., 619, 620. Jay to Washington, 16 March 1786.

VOL. VI.-14

government, which, while it protected and secured the whole, left to the several states those rights of internal sovereignty which it was not necessary to delegate and which could be exercised without injury to the federal authority. If New Jersey conceives herself oppressed under the present confederation, let her, through her delegates in congress, state to them the oppression she complains of, and urge the calling of a general convention of the states for the purpose of increasing the powers of the federal government and rendering it more adequate for the ends for which it was instituted; in this constitutional mode of application there can be no doubt of her meeting with all the support and attention she can wish. I have long been of opinion that it is the only true and radical remedy for our public defects, and shall with pleasure assent to and support any measure of that kind which may be introduced while I continue a member of that body." *

Pleased with the idea of a general convention, New Jersey recalled its vote, accepted within a week the invitation of Virginia to a convention at Annapolis, elected its commissioners, and empowered them "to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations and OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS might be necessary to the common interest and permanent harmony of the several states; and to report such an act on the subject as, when ratified by them, would enable the United States in congress assembled effectually to provide for the exigencies of the union." +

"If it should be determined that the reform of the confederation is to be made by a convention," so wrote Monroe at this time to Madison, "the powers of the Virginia commissioners who are to go to Annapolis are inadequate." + Explaining why more extended powers had not been given, Madison answered: "The assembly would have revolted against a plenipotentiary commission to their deputies for the convention; the option lay between doing what was done and doing nothing." #

* Carey's Museum, ii., 155. Otto to Vergennes, 17 March 1786. Report of Bertholff, the Austrian agent. † Elliot, i., 117, 118. This letter from Monroe, of a date previous to 19 March 1786, is missing. Its contents are known only from the citation of it by Madison. #Madison to Monroe, 19 March 1786. Madison, i., 228, 229.