ing the confidence of the country, of which the following year was destined to deprive it altogether.

Before the year 1785 had closed, however, Virginia was preparing to give the weight of her influence to the advancing cause of reform.

A proposition was introduced into the House of Delegates of Virginia, to instruct the delegates of the State in Congress to move a recommendation to all the States to authorize Congress to collect a revenue by means of duties uniform throughout the United States, for a period of thirteen years. The absolute necessity for such a system was generally admitted; but, as in Massachusetts, the opinions of the members were divided between a permanent grant of power and a grant for a limited term. The advocates of the limitation, arguing that the utility of the measure ought to be tested by experiment, contended, that a temporary grant of commercial powers might be and would be renewed from time to time, if experience should prove its efficacy. They forgot that the other powers granted to the Union, on which its whole fabric rested, were perpetual and irrevocable; and that the first sacrifices of sovereignty made by the States had been the result of circumstances which imperatively demanded the surrender, just as the situation of the country now demanded a similar surrender of an irrevocable power over commerce. The proposal to make this grant temporary only, was a proposal to engraft an anomaly upon the other powers of the

1 November 30th, 1785.

Confederacy, with very little prospect of its future renewal; for the caprice, the jealousy, and the diversity of interests of the different States, were obstacles which the scheme of a temporary grant could only evade for the present, leaving them still in existence when the period of the grant should expire. But the arguments in favor of this scheme prevailed, and the friends of the more enlarged and liberal system, believing that a temporary measure would stand afterwards in the way of a permanent one, and would confirm the policy of other countries founded on the jealousies of the States, were glad to allow the subject to subside, until a new event opened the prospect for a more efficient plan.1

The citizens of Virginia and Maryland, directly interested in the navigation of the rivers Potomac and Pocomoke, and of the Bay of Chesapeake, had long been embarrassed by the conflicting rights and regulations of their respective States; and, in the spring of 1785, an effort at accommodation was made, by the appointment of commissioners on the part of each State to form a compact between them for the regulation of the trade upon those waters. These commissioners assembled at Alexandria in March, and while there made a visit at Mount Vernon, where a further scheme was concerted for the establishment of harmonious commercial regulations between the two

1 The resolution introduced on the 30th of November was agreed to in the Delegates, but before it was carried up to the Senate, it was reconsidered and laid upon the

table.

Elliot's Debates, I. 114, 115. Letter of Mr. Madison to General Washington, of December 9, 1785, Washington's Works, IX. 508.

States. This plan contemplated the appointment of other commissioners, having power to make arrangements, with the assent of Congress, for maintaining a naval force in the Chesapeake, and also for establishing a tariff of duties on imports, to be enacted by the legislatures of both the States. A report, embracing this recommendation, was accordingly made by the Alexandria commissioners to their respective governments. In the legislature of Virginia this report was received while the proposition for granting temporary commercial powers to Congress was under consideration; and it was immediately followed by a resolution directing that part of the plan which respected duties on imports to be communicated to all the States, with an invitation to send deputies to the meeting. In a few days afterwards, the cele

1 What direct agency General Washington had in suggesting or promoting this scheme, does not appear; although it seems to have originated, or to have been agreed upon, at his house. His published correspondence contains no mention of the visit of the commissioners; but Chief Justice Marshall states that such a visit was made, and in this statement he is followed by Mr. Sparks. (Marshall, V. 90; Sparks, I. 428.) Mr. Madison, writing to General Washington in December, 1785, refers to "the proposed appointment of commissioners for Virginia and Maryland, concerted at Mount Vernon, for keeping up harmony in the commercial regulations of the two States,"

and says that the meeting of commissioners from all the States, which had then been proposed,

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seems naturally to grow out of it." (Washington's Writings, IX. 509.)

That Washington foresaw that the plan agreed upon at his house in March would lead to a general assembly of representatives of all the States, seems altogether probable, from the opinions which he entertained and expressed to his correspondents, during that summer, upon the subject of conferring adequate commercial powers upon Congress. (See his Letters to Mr. McHenry and Mr. Madison of August 22d and November 30th, Writings, IX. 121, 145.)

brated resolution of Virginia, which led the way to the Convention at Annapolis, was adopted by the legislature, directing the appointment of commissioners to meet with the deputies of all the other States who might be appointed for the same purpose, to consider the whole subject of the commerce of the United States.1 The circular letter which transmitted this resolution to the several States proposed that Annapolis in the State of Maryland should be the place, and that the following September should be the time of meeting.

The fate of this measure now turned principally upon the action of the State of New York. The power of levying a national impost, proposed in the revenue system of 1783, had been steadily withheld from Congress by the legislature of that State. Ever since the peace, the State had been divided between two parties, the friends of adequate powers in Con

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1 This resolution, passed January 21, 1786, was in these words: Resolved, That Edmund Randolph, James Madison, Jr., Walter Jones, St. George Tucker, Meriweather Smith, David Ross, William Ronald, and George Mason, Esquires, be appointed commissioners, who, or any five of whom, shall meet such commissioners as may be appointed by the other States in the Union, at a time and place to be agreed on, to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situation and trade of the said States; to consider how

far a uniform system in their commercial regulations may be necessary to their common interest and their permanent harmony; and to report to the several States such an act relative to this great object, as, when unanimously ratified by them, will enable the United States in Congress assembled effectually to provide for the same; that the said commissioners shall immediately transmit to the several States copies of the preceding resolution, with a circular letter respecting their concurrence therein, and proposing a time and place for the meeting aforesaid."

gress, and the adherents of State sovereignty; and the belief that the commercial advantage of the State depended upon retaining the power to collect their own revenues, had all along given to the latter an ascendency in the legislature. In 1784, they established a custom-house and a revenue system of their own. In 1785, a proposition to grant the required powers to Congress was lost in the Senate; and in 1786, it became necessary for Congress to bring this question to a final issue. Three other States, as we have seen, stood in the same category with New York, having decided in favor of no part of the plan which Congress had so long and so repeatedly urged upon their adoption. Declaring, therefore, that the crisis had arrived when the people of the United States, by whose will and for whose benefit the federal government was instituted, must decide whether they would support their work 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 system, and thereby giving strength to the Confederacy, they would hazard the existence of the Union and the privileges for which they had contended, -Congress left the responsibility of the decision with the legislatures of the States.2

1 Rhode Island, Maryland, and Georgia.

2 "The committee," said the Report, "have thought it their duty candidly to examine the principles of this system, and to dis

cover, if possible, the reasons whic have prevented its adoption; they cannot learn that any member of the Confederacy has stated or brought forward any objections against it, and the result of their