The State which refused to grant this power to Congress was Rhode Island. On the 6th of December, 1782, Congress determined to send a deputation to that State, to endeavor to procure its assent to this constitutional change. The increasing discontents of the army, the loud clamors of the public creditors, the extreme disproportion between the current means and the demands of the public service, and the impossibility of obtaining further loans in Europe unless some security could be held out to lenders, made it necessary for Congress to be especially urgent with the legislature of Rhode Island. But, at the moment when the deputation was about to depart on this mission, the intelligence was received that Virginia had repealed the act by which she had previously granted to Congress the power of laying duties, and the proposal was therefore abandoned for a time.[178] But the leading persons then in Congress--who saw the ruin impending over the country; who were aware that the whole amount of money which Congress had received, to carry on the public business for the year then just expiring, was less than two millions of dollars,[179] while the three branches of feeding, clothing, and paying the army exceeded five millions of dollars per annum, exclusive of all other departments of the public service; and who were equally aware that no means whatever existed of paying the interest on the public debts--resolved still to persevere in their endeavors to procure the establishment of revenues equal to the purpose of funding all the debts of the United States.