To make bad matters worse, the New England Federalists were renewing their talk of a dissolution of the Union. "We have been led by the terms of the Constitution," said Governor Strong of Massachusetts, addressing the Legislature on October 5, 1814, "to rely on the government of the Union to provide for our defence. We have resigned to that government the revenues of the State with the expectation that this object would not be neglected. Let us, then, unite in such measures for our safety as the times demand and the principles of justice and the law of self-preservation will justify."[178] Answering for the Legislature, which understood the Governor's words to be an invitation to resume powers the State had given up when adopting the Constitution, Harrison Gray Otis reported that "this people, being ready and determined to defend themselves, have the greatest need of those resources derivable from themselves which the national government has hitherto thought proper to employ elsewhere. When this deficiency becomes apparent, no reason can preclude the right of the whole people who were parties to it, to adopt another."[179] The report closed by recommending the appointment of delegates "to meet and confer with delegates from the States of New England or any of them," out of which grew the celebrated Hartford Convention that met on the 15th of December. The report of this convention, made on the 24th of the same month, declared that a severance of the Union can be justified only by absolute necessity; but, following the Virginia resolution of 1798, it confirmed the right of a State to "interpose its authority" for the protection of its citizens against conscriptions and drafts, and for an arrangement with the general government to retain "a reasonable portion" of the revenues to be used in its own defence and in the defence of neighbouring States. In other words, it favoured the establishment of a New England confederacy. Thus, after ten years, the crisis had come which Pickering, the storm petrel, desired to precipitate in the days when Hamilton declined to listen and Aaron Burr consented to lead. [Footnote 178: Message; _Niles_, Vol. 7, p. 113.] [Footnote 179: Report of Oct. 8, 1814; _Niles_, Vol. 7, p. 149.]