1787] Address to the States. Call for a Convention. 245 necessary to the common interest and permanent harmony of the several States." And that suggestion was acted upon. An address was accordingly prepared, by the hand of Hamilton, to the legislatures of the States, urging that speedy measures be taken to bring about a general meeting of the States in a Convention, to consider questions of trade and commerce, and for " such other purposes as the situation of public affairs may be found to require." The proposal met -with favour in Congress, and in all the States, excepting Rhode Island, in greater or less degree, according as the result was likely to affect them. Congress, in February, 1787, resolved that it was expedient that a convention of delegates from the several States be held in May, at Philadelphia, " for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." Some of the States had already taken action and appointed deputies; all the rest (except Rhode Island) followed, some with re- luctance, before the meeting of the Convention. The commissions varied. Those of Massachusetts and New York limited the deputies in terms of the language of Congress. Some were in broader terms. The commission of the deputies of New Hampshire authorised them "to discuss and decide upon the most effectual means to remedy the defects of our Federal Union, and to procure and secure the enlarged purposes which it was intended to effect"; that of New Jersey, to take "into consideration the state of the Union as to trade and other important objects"; that of North Carolina, to "revise the Federal Constitution." The meaning of legal right between States drawing into closer union was now to come before the Convention, in somewhat the same way as in the struggle with Great Britain. An efficient external government was to be established, and in some way set over the same political bodies which as colonies had struggled as to rights with the mother-country. What now was to be considered legal right ? Surely nothing less than what the colonies had contended for against England, equality in subordination, equality in some near resemblance to equality touching private right. The States had now become more unequal than they had ever been before, often by unfair means ; some had grasped, and were determined to hold, more than was their right ; others of course had lost, and were suffering Accordingly. The former must now yield what they ought not to have taken ; the latter must be put upon the footing to which they were entitled in a nation based upon equality. And then, thereafter, it would have to be understood that some must perforce give way, in time of need, to the just requirements of others, whether sister-States or the general govern- ment. But would the States now accept for themselves what the colonies had desired of England, equality in subordination ? No man knew ; the CH. VIII.
