%171. Congress proposes Amendments.%--Of the many defects in the Articles, the Continental Congress was fully aware, and it had many a time asked the states to make amendments. One proposed that Congress should have power for twenty-five years to lay a tax of five per cent on all goods imported, and use the money to pay the Continental debts. Another was to require each state to raise by special tax a sum sufficient to pay its yearly share of the current expenses of Congress. A third was to bestow on Congress for fifteen years the sole power to regulate trade and commerce. A fourth provided that in future the share each state was to bear of the current expenses should be in proportion to its population. But the Articles of Confederation could not be amended unless all thirteen states consented, and, as all thirteen never did consent, none of these amendments were ever made. %172. The States attempt to regulate Trade and fail.%--In the meantime the states attempted to regulate trade for themselves. New York laid double duties on English ships. Pennsylvania taxed a long list of foreign goods. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island passed acts imposing heavy duties on articles unless they came in American vessels. But these laws were not uniform, and as many states took no action, very little good was accomplished.[1] [Footnote 1: McMaster's _History of the People of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 246-259, 266-280; Fiske's _Critical Period of American History_, 134-137, 145-147.] %173. A Trade Convention called to meet at Annapolis, 1786.%[2]--Under these conditions, the business of the whole country was at a standstill, and as Congress had no power to do anything to relieve the distress, the state of Virginia sent out a circular letter to her sister states. She asked them to appoint delegates to meet and "take into consideration the trade and commerce of the United States." Four (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) responded, and their delegates, with those from Virginia, met at Annapolis in September, 1786. [Footnote 2: The report of this Annapolis convention is printed in _Bulletin of Bureau of Rolls and Library of the Department of State_, No. 1, Appendix, pp. 1-5.] CHAPTER XIII MAKING THE CONSTITUTION %174. Call for the Constitutional Convention.%--Finding that it could do nothing, because so few states were represented, and because the powers of the delegates were so limited, the convention recommended that all the states in the Union be asked by Congress to send delegates to a new convention, to meet at Philadelphia in May, 1787, "to take into consideration the situation of the United States," and "to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."