[368] General Knox, writing to General Washington under date of January 14, 1787, says: "You ask what prevented the Eastern States from attending the September meeting at Annapolis. It is difficult to give a precise answer to this question. Perhaps torpidity in New Hampshire; faction and heats about their paper money in Rhode Island; and jealousy in Connecticut. Massachusetts had chosen delegates to attend, who did not decline until very late, and the finding of other persons to supply their places was attended with delay, so that the convention had broken up by the time the new-chosen delegates had reached Philadelphia." Writings of Washington, IX. 513. [369] Report of the Annapolis Convention, Elliot's Debates, I. 116; Hamilton's Works, II. 336. [370] Article XIII. [371] Report, ut supra. [372] See his letter to James Duane, written in 1780, Life, I. 284-305. [373] Ibid. The first public proposal of a continental convention is assigned by Mr. Madison to one Pelatiah Webster, whom he calls "an able, though not conspicuous citizen," and who made this suggestion in a pamphlet published in May, 1781. Recent researches have not added to our knowledge of this writer. In the summer of 1782, the legislature of New York, under the suggestion of Hamilton, passed resolutions recommending such a convention. On the 1st of April, 1783, Hamilton, in a debate in Congress, expressed his desire to see a general convention take place. In 1784, the measure was a good deal talked of among the members of Congress, and in the winter of 1784-85, Noah Webster, an eminent political writer in Connecticut, suggested "a new system of government, which should act, not on the States, but directly on individuals, and vest in Congress full power to carry its laws into effect." In 1786, the subject was again talked of among members of Congress, before the meeting at Annapolis. (Madison. Elliot, V. 117, 118.) But Hamilton's letter to James Duane, in 1780, although not published at the time, was of course earlier than any of these suggestions. In that letter, after showing that the fundamental defect of the then existing system was a want of power in Congress, he thus analyzes in advance the Articles of Confederation, which had not then taken effect:--"But the Confederation itself is defective, and requires to be altered. It is neither fit for war nor peace. The idea of an uncontrollable sovereignty, in each State, over its internal police, will defeat the other powers given to Congress, and make our Union feeble and precarious. There are instances, without number, where acts necessary for the general good, and which rise out of the powers given to Congress, must interfere with the internal police of the States; and there are as many instances in which the particular States, by arrangements of internal police, can effectually, though indirectly, counteract the arrangements of Congress. You have already had examples of this, for which I refer to your own memory.