Rhode Island, small in territory and in numbers, but favorably situated for the pursuits of commerce, had strenuously resisted every effort to enlarge the powers of the Union. Ever since the Declaration of Independence, the people of that State had clung to the opportunity, afforded by their situation, of taxing the contiguous States, through their consumption of commodities brought into its numerous and convenient ports. For this object they had refused their assent to the revenue system of 1783; and as the failure of that system had prevented an exhibition of some of the benefits to be derived from uniform fiscal regulations, the local government of Rhode Island adhered, in 1786-7, to what they had always regarded as the true interest of their State. They did, it is true, appoint delegates to the commercial convention at Annapolis, but the persons appointed did not attend; and when the resolve which sanctioned the Convention of 1787 was adopted in Congress, Rhode Island was not represented in that body. When the recommendation of the Congress came before the legislature of the State, there appears to have been a strong party in favor of making an appointment of delegates to the Convention. The mercantile part of the population had come to entertain more liberal and far-seeing notions of their true interests; and the views of some of the more intelligent of the farmers and mechanics had been much modified. But by far the larger portion of the people--wedded to a system of paper money, which furnished almost their sole currency, and vaguely apprehending that a new government for the Union would destroy it, seeking the abolition of debts, public and private, and jealous of all influence from without--were in a condition to be ruled by their demagogues, rather than to be enlightened and aided by their statesmen. In May, the legislature rejected a proposition to appoint delegates to the Federal Convention; and in June, although the upper house, or Governor and Council, embraced the measure, it was again negatived in the House of Assembly by a large majority. The minority then formed an organization, which never lost sight of the national relations of the State, and which finally succeeded in bringing her into the Union under the new Constitution, in 1790.