of foreign governments, great confusion was created by the numerous and variable standards of value and the unsteady financial laws of the several States. In some the creditors were obliged to accept real and personal estate at an appraised value in satisfaction of their judgments. In others depreciated paper was legal tender in payment for purchases, on a fixed scale of depreciation. In others it must be received at its par value. Numerous staylaws were enacted. Even in Massachusetts the courts were interrupted by riotous force. Legislation on the relation between debtor and creditor was constantly changing. There was no security for one side or the other. The rate of exchange in interstate transactions was alarmingly variable. One of the States authorized the court and jury to decide questions of debt to the best of their knowledge, agreeably to equity and good conscience. In the pressure of the times some States appeared to abandon hope of a metallic currency, and took refuge in new emissions of paper money. A British agent writes to his government: "It is with pleasure that I can inform your lordship what silver and gold is to be had in this country goes in his Majesty's packet-boats to England." Georgia redeemed its paper with specie certificates at the rate of one thousand for one, while Delaware adopted the rate of

one to seventy-five. Virginia, overwhelmed with depreciated paper, stopped its issue after 1781, and undertook to redeem it in loan certificates at the rate of one thousand for one. Judgments could be satisfied by the tender of hemp, tobacco, flour, at a rate fixed by the county courts, and even taxes were paid in

tobacco.

Under these conditions contracts wholly lost the protection of the laws under which they were made. The debtors were far more numerous than creditors, and practically controlled legislation by demands which rested on the emergency alone, ungoverned by principle. Good men everywhere were struggling against the general demoralization, and openly protesting against it. It led them strongly towards the plan of a new constitution for the Confederacy, which should destroy this power in the States by conferring on Congress exclusive authority to regulate the legal-tender money of the country, and to prohibit the States from impairing the obligation of contracts.

During this year (1785) the common efforts of Maryland and Virginia to unite the waters of the Potomac and Ohio for the improvement of commerce, and the especial desire of Maryland for a canal connecting the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, for which the coöperation of Pennsylvania and Delaware was needful,

induced Maryland to make a further proposition. If even these two limited lines of internal communication could not proceed without a common understanding of several States, how could all the commercial relations of the future go on if liable to the conflicting legislation of independent States? The Legislature of Maryland in this connection addressed a communication to that of Virginia, proposing that commissioners from all the States should be invited to meet and regulate the restrictions on commerce for the whole. Madison quickly saw the opportunity to inaugurate the long-desired movement for a more perfect Union, and, holding himself in the background, persuaded a state sovereignty member to offer the resolution which he prepared, for the appointment of commissioners by Virginia, to meet commissioners from all the States, to examine and report on the requisite increase of the powers of Congress over trade, their action being subject to the ratification of every State. It was quietly called up at a later period, and passed (January, 1786); and Madison was placed at the head of the commission. Annapolis was proposed as the place, and September as the time, for the assembling of the commissioners. No New England State appeared, and no Southern State south of Virginia, while even Maryland was absent from her own capital. The five States

present were represented by men from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, who believed in more far-reaching provisions than those suggested by the original resolution. Their sessions were soon closed, with a recommendation to their States to obtain a meeting of all the States at Philadelphia in the following May, to consider the situation of the country, and to devise the measures necessary to make the Constitution adequate to the exigencies of the Union.

Before the meeting at Annapolis, new efforts were made in Congress to enlarge its powers. Charles Pinckney reported from a committee seven amendments to the Articles of Confederation, giving Congress power to regulate foreign and domestic trade, and to collect duties, which, however, must be paid over to the State in which collected; to punish treason and crimes committed on the high seas; to establish an appellate court of seven judges with jurisdiction of certain Federal questions; to establish a new system of revenue, eleven States consenting; and regulating the payment of quotas by States. After long and sometimes violent discussion, these propositions were abandoned to that great file of ever-accumulating unfinished business. The country ceased to expect relief from its Congress. New Jersey was gained to the plan of a convention

for enlarging the powers of the general government. The taxation on her imported goods, introduced through the port of New York, and the practical assessment of her own citizens for the sole benefit of the New York State Treasury, opened her eyes to the necessity of a reform in the Union.

The general situation of the country in the summer of 1786 was deplorable. From a careful official report made to the Count de Vergennes in September of that year, it appears that the condition especially of New England was sufficient to impart a sentiment of despair. The common masses of the people, driven by distress, demanded the emission of paper money for their relief. Massachusetts had seen its prodigious evils in other States and refused it. These people then took arms and dispersed the courts, demanded their abolition, and that of the State Senate, and cried out for a new emission of paper, and other wild objects from which they imagined relief would come. In New Hampshire three hundred mutineers assembled to break up a court of justice, and intimidated their legislature. Many of the people of Connecticut made efforts for the abolishment of debts and the dissolution of the courts. Hundreds of farms were there offered for sale for the payment of taxes; and specie was so scarce that they hardly brought

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