VII. existing evils; they never could gain a majority in con- CHAP. gress; no one fancied that they could obtain the unanimous assent of the states; and, could they have gained 1786 it, the articles of confederation would have remained as feeble as before. Still less was it possible for congress to raise an annual revenue. The country was in arrears for the interest on its funded debt, and in the last two years had received not more than half a million dollars in specie from all the states-a sum not sufficient for the annual ordinary charges of the federal government. Pennsylvania had complied with the late requisitions almost with exactitude; Maryland and Virginia had furnished liberal supplies; New York exerted herself, and successfully, by the aid of her custom-house; but Massachusetts and all the other New England states were in arrears, and the three southernmost states had paid little money since the conclusion of the late war. Congress confessed that it could not raise a revenue unless measures were adopted for funding the foreign and domestic debts, and they went back to the system framed by Madison in April, 1783; but the success of that measure depended on a unanimous grant of new power to the general government. All the states except New York had assented to the principle of deriving a federal revenue from imports, though the assenting acts of a majority of them still required modifications. Congress saw fit to assume that nothing remained but to obtain the consent of that one state. In March a meeting of inhabitants of the city of New York unanimously petitioned the legislature to consent to the system which could alone give energy VII. CHAP. to the union or prosperity to commerce. On the other hand, it was contended that the confederation and the 1786. constitution of each state are the foundations which neither congress nor the legislatures of the states can alter, and on which it is the duty of both to build; that the surrender to congress of an independent authority to levy duties would be the surrender of an authority that inheres necessarily in the respective legislatures of each state; that deviation from the fundamental principles of the American constitutions would be ruinous, first, to the liberty of the states, and then to their existence; that congress, already holding in one hand the sword, would hold in the other the purse, and concentrate in itself the sovereignty of the thirteen states; that it is the division of the great republic into different republics of a middling size and confederated laws which save it from despotism.' The legislature of New York conformed to these opinions, and, while on the fourth of May it imposed the duty of five per cent., it reserved to itself the revenue with the sole right of its collection. Nor was it long before Pennsylvania, which held a large part of the public debt, suspended its adhesion to the revenue plan of congress unless it should include supplementary funds. In August, King and Monroe were despatched by congress to confer with its legislature. It is on record that the speech of King was adapted to insure applause even from an Attic audience; but the subject was referred to the next assembly. 1 Report of the Austrian agent, Henry Hill to Washington, Bertholff, 1 April, 1786. MS. 1 Oct., 1786. MS. VII. Congress joined battle more earnestly with New CHAP York. They recommended the executive to convene its legislature immediately for the purpose of granting 1786 the impost. The governor made reply: "I have not power to convene the legislature except on extraordinary occasions, and, as the present business has repeatedly been laid before them, and has so recently received their determination, it cannot come within that description." Congress repeated its demand, and it only served to call from Clinton a firm renewal of his refusal. The strife had degenerated into an alterca tion which only established before the country that congress, which would not call a convention and could not of itself frame fit amendments to the confederation, could not raise an annual revenue for the merest wants of the government, and could not rescue the honor of the nation from default in payments of interest on moneys borrowed to secure their independ ence. The case was the same in everything that congress undertook. Every treaty introduced a foreign power; but, still, congress had no other means of fulfilling its treaty obligations than through the good-will and concurrence of each one of its states; though it was the theory of the articles of confederation that the United States presented themselves to foreign powers as one nation. The difficulty which caused all these perpetual failures was inherent and incurable. Congress, a deliberative body, undertook to enact requisitions, and then direct the legislatures of thirteen independent states, which were equally deliberative bodies, to pass CHAP. laws to give them effect, itself remaining helpless till VII. they should do so. A deliberative body ordering 1786. another independent deliberative body what laws to make is an anomaly; and, in the case of congress, the hopelessness of harmony was heightened by the immense extent of the United States, by the differences of time when the legislatures of the several states convened, and by a conflict of the interests, passions, hesitancies, and wills of thirteen legislatures independent of each other, and uncontrolled by a common head. No ray of hope remained but from the convention which Virginia had invited to assemble on the first Monday in September at Annapolis. CHAPTER VIII. VIRGINIA INVITES DEPUTIES OF THE SEVERAL LEGIS- VIII. CONGRESS having confessedly failed to find ways CHAP. and means for carrying on the government, the convention which had been called to Annapolis became 1786. the ground of hope for the nation. The house of delegates of Maryland promptly accepted the invitation of Virginia, but the senate, in its zeal to strengthen the appeal which congress was then addressing to the states for a revenue, refused its concurrence. Neither Connecticut, nor South Carolina, nor Georgia sent delegates to the meeting. In Massachusetts two sets of nominees, among whom appears the name of George Cabot, declined the service; the third were, like the Rhode Island delegates, arrested on the way by tidings that the convention was over. Every one of the commissioners chosen for New York, among whom were Egbert Benson and Hamilton, was engrossed by pressing duties. Egbert Benson, the guiding statesman in the Hartford convention of 1780, was engaged as attorney-general in the courts at Albany. With Schloss Hobart, the upright |