But its imbecility from this pretension soon became apparent.  As early as December, 1782, a committee of Congress made an elaborate report on the refusal of Rhode Island, one of the States, to confer certain powers on Congress with regard to revenue and commerce.  In April, 1783, an address of Congress to the States was put forth, appealing to their justice and plighted faith, and representing the consequence of a failure on their part to sustain the Government and provide for its wants.  In April, 1784, a similar appeal was made to what were called “the several States,” whose legislatures were recommended to vest “the United States in Congress assembled” with certain powers.  In July, 1785, a committee of Congress made another elaborate report on the reason why the States should confer upon Congress powers therein enumerated, in the course of which it was urged, that, “unless the States act together, there is no plan of policy into which they can separately enter, which they will not be separately interested to defeat, and, of course, all their measures must prove vain and abortive.”  In February and March, 1786, there were two other reports of committees of Congress, exhibiting the failure of the States to comply with the requisitions of Congress, and the necessity for a complete accession of all the States to the revenue system.  In October, 1786, there was still another report, most earnestly renewing the former appeals to the States.  Nothing could be more urgent.

As early as July, 1782, even before the first report to Congress, resolutions were adopted by the State of New York, declaring “that the situation of these States is in a peculiar manner critical,” and “that the radical source of most of our embarrassments is the want of sufficient power in Congress to effectuate that ready and perfect cooperation of the different States on which their immediate safety and future happiness depend.”  Finally, in September, 1786, at Annapolis, commissioners from several States, after declaring “the situation of the United States delicate and critical, calling for an exertion of the united virtue and wisdom of all the members of the Confederacy,” recommended the meeting of a Convention “to devise such further provision as shall appear necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”  In pursuance of this recommendation, the Congress of the Confederation proposed a Convention “for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the United States of America, and reporting such alterations and amendments of the said Articles of Confederation as the representatives met in such Convention shall judge proper and necessary to render them adequate to the preservation and support of the Union.”

In pursuance of the call, delegates to the proposed Convention were duly appointed by the legislatures of the several States, and the Convention assembled at Philadelphia in May, 1787.  The present Constitution was the well-ripened fruit of their deliberations.  In transmitting it to Congress, General Washington, who was the President of the Convention, in a letter bearing date September 17, 1787, made use of this instructive language:—­