In the year 1786, a sum of more than three millions was wanted for the current demands on the treasury, and a new requisition was made for it, under the old rule of the Confederation.[222] Two of the States, Rhode Island and New Jersey, thereupon passed acts, making their own paper currency receivable on all arrears of taxes due to the United States, and proposing to pay their quotas in such currency.[223] But the entire inadequacy of this source of supply to maintain the federal government, and to discharge the annual public engagements, had now become but too apparent. From the 1st of November, 1781, to the 1st of January, 1786, less than two and a half millions of dollars had been received from requisitions made during that period, amounting to more than ten millions.[224] For the last fourteen months of that interval, the average receipts from requisitions amounted to less than four hundred thousand dollars per annum, while the interest alone due on the foreign debt was more than half a million; and, in the course of each of the nine following years, the average sum of one million, annually, would become due by instalments on the principal of that debt.[225] In addition to this, the interest on the domestic debt; the security of the navigation and commerce of the country against the Barbary powers; the immediate protection of the people dwelling on the frontier from the savages; the establishment of military magazines in different parts of the Union, quite indispensable to the public safety; the maintenance of the federal government at home, and the support of the public servants abroad,--each and all depended upon the contribution of the States under the annual requisitions, and were each and all likely to be involved in a common failure and ruin.[226] There can be no doubt that the continuance of the practice of making requisitions, after the proposal of the revenue system of 1783, had some tendency to prevent the adoption of that system by the States. But there was no other alternative within the constitutional reach of Congress; and in the mean time, the revenue system, submitted as it necessarily was to the legislatures of thirteen different States, was, as far as it was assented to, embarrassed with the most discordant and irreconcilable provisions. It was ascertained in February, 1786, that seven of the States had granted the impost part of the system, in such a manner, that, if the other six States had made similar grants, the plan of the general impost might have been immediately put into operation.[227] Two of the other States had also granted the impost, but had embarrassed their grants with provisos, which suspended their operation until all the other States should have passed laws in full conformity with the whole system.[228] Two other States had fully acceded to the system in all its parts;[229] but four others had not decided in favor of any part of it.[230]