Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/139

Rh planned, and so impressively recommended to the states. Sympathizing, under this aspect of affairs, in the alarm of the friends of free government at the threatened danger of an abortive result to the great, and perhaps last, experiment in its favor, I could not be insensible to the obligation to aid, as far as I could, in averting the calamity. With this view I acceded to the desire of my fellow-citizens of the county, that I should be one of its representatives in the legislature, hoping that I might there best contribute to inculcate the critical posture to which the revolutionary cause was reduced, and the merit of a leading agency of the state in bringing about a rescue of the Union, and the blessings of liberty staked on it, from an impending catastrophe.

It required but little time, after taking my seat in the House of Delegates in May, 1784, to discover that, however favorable the general disposition of the state might be towards the Confederacy, the legislature retained the aversion of its predecessors to transfers of power from the state to the government of the Union, notwithstanding the urgent demands of the federal treasury, the glaring inadequacy of the authorized mode of supplying it, the rapid growth of anarchy in the federal system, and the animosity kindled among the states by their conflicting regulations.

The temper of the legislature, and the wayward course of its proceedings, may be gathered from the Journals of its sessions in the years 1784 and 1785.$68$

The failure, however, of the varied propositions in the legislature for enlarging the powers of Congress, the continued failure of the efforts of Congress to obtain from them the means of providing for the debts of the revolution, and of countervailing the commercial laws of Great Britain, a source of much irritation, and against which the separate efforts of the states were found worse than abortive;—these considerations, with the lights thrown on the whole subject by the free and full discussion it had undergone, led to a general acquiescence in the resolution passed on the 21st of January, 1786, which proposed and invited a meeting of deputies from all the states, as follows:

"Resolved, That Edmund Randolph, James Madison, Jr., Walter Jones, St. George Tucker, and Merriwether Smith, Esquires, be appointed commissioners, who, or any three of whom, shall meet such commissioners as may be appointed in the other states of 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 situations and trade of 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, effectually to provide for the same."

The resolution had been brought forward some weeks before, on the failure of a proposed grant of power to Congress to collect a revenue from commerce, which had been abandoned by its friends in consequence of material alterations made in the grant by a committee of the whole. The resolution, though introduced by Mr. Tyler, an 15