It is manifest from this occurrence, that Congress in 1785 were no more in a condition to take the lead and conduct the country to a revision of the Federal Constitution, than they were in 1783, when Hamilton wished to have a declaration made of its defects, and found it impracticable. There were seldom present more than five-and-twenty members; and, at the time when Massachusetts proposed to call upon them to act upon this momentous subject, the whole assembly embraced as little eminent talent as had ever appeared in it. They were not well placed to observe that something more than "the declamation of designing men" was at work, loosening the foundations of the system which they were administering.[358] They saw some of its present inconveniences; but they did not see how rapidly it was losing the confidence of the country, of which the following year was destined to deprive it altogether. Before the year 1785 had closed, however, Virginia was preparing to give the weight of her influence to the advancing cause of reform. A proposition was introduced into the House of Delegates of Virginia, to instruct the delegates of the State in Congress to move a recommendation to all the States to authorize Congress to collect a revenue by means of duties uniform throughout the United States, for a period of thirteen years.[359] The absolute necessity for such a system was generally admitted; but, as in Massachusetts, the opinions of the members were divided between a permanent grant of power and a grant for a limited term. The advocates of the limitation, arguing that the utility of the measure ought to be tested by experiment, contended, that a temporary grant of commercial powers might be and would be renewed from time to time, if experience should prove its efficacy. They forgot that the other powers granted to the Union, on which its whole fabric rested, were perpetual and irrevocable; and that the first sacrifices of sovereignty made by the States had been the result of circumstances which imperatively demanded the surrender, just as the situation of the country now demanded a similar surrender of an irrevocable power over commerce. The proposal to make this grant temporary only, was a proposal to engraft an anomaly upon the other powers of the Confederacy, with very little prospect of its future renewal; for the caprice, the jealousy, and the diversity of interests of the different States, were obstacles which the scheme of a temporary grant could only evade for the present, leaving them still in existence when the period of the grant should expire. But the arguments in favor of this scheme prevailed, and the friends of the more enlarged and liberal system, believing that a temporary measure would stand afterwards in the way of a permanent one, and would confirm the policy of other countries founded on the jealousies of the States, were glad to allow the subject to subside, until a new event opened the prospect for a more efficient plan.[360]