The legislature of Massachusetts was assembled in the summer of 1785. The proposal of Congress, made to the States in 1784, to grant the power of regulating trade, had been responded to by only four of the States, and the negotiations in Europe were failing from the want of it. Great uneasiness and distress pervaded all the commercial classes, and extended to every other class capable of being affected by a state of things in which a large balance, occasioned by the extravagant importation and use of foreign manufactures, was thrown against the country. The money of the State was rapidly drawn off to meet this balance, which its other exhausted means of remittance could not satisfy. It was impossible for the State to recover its former prosperity, while Great Britain and other nations continued the commercial systems which they had adopted. It had become plain to the comprehension of all intelligent persons concerned in trade, that nothing could break up those systems so long as the United States were destitute of the same power to regulate their foreign trade, by admitting or excluding foreign vessels and cargoes according to their interests; and it needed only the popular expression of this palpable truth, enforced by a clear and decided executive message, to induce the legislature to act upon it.[353] Governor Bowdoin gave the necessary impulse, and suggested the appointment of special delegates from the States to settle and define the powers with which Congress ought to be invested.[354] This message caused the adoption of the first resolution, passed by the legislature of any State, declaring the Articles of Confederation to be inadequate to the great purposes which they were originally designed to effect, and recommending a convention of delegates from all the States, for the purpose of revising them, and reporting to Congress how far it might be necessary to alter or enlarge the powers of the Federal Union, in order to secure and perpetuate its primary objects. Congress was requested by these resolves to recommend such a convention. A letter, urging the importance of the subject, was addressed by the Governor of Massachusetts to the President of Congress, and another to the executive of each of the other States. The resolves were also inclosed to the delegates of the State in Congress, with instructions to lay them before that body at the earliest opportunity, and to make every exertion to carry them into effect.[355]