Immediately after the first rejection of the proposal to unite with the other States in reforming the Confederation, a body of commercial persons in Providence addressed a letter to the Convention, expressing the opinion that full power for the regulation of the commerce of the United States, both foreign and domestic, ought to be vested in the national council, and that effectual arrangements should also be made for giving operation to the existing powers of Congress in their requisitions for national purposes. Their object in this communication was to prevent an impression among the other States, unfavorable to the commercial interests of Rhode Island, from growing out of the circumstance of their being unrepresented in the Convention. Expressing the hope that the result of its deliberations would be to "strengthen the Union, promote the commerce, increase the power, and establish the credit of the United States," they pledged their influence and best exertions to secure the adoption of that result by the State of Rhode Island. The signers of this letter formed the nucleus of that party which afterwards fulfilled the pledge thus given to the Convention. The absence of Rhode Island did not occasion a serious embarrassment. The resolve of Congress recommending the Convention did not expressly require the presence of all the States; and the commissions given by each of the States which adopted the recommendation clearly implied that their delegates were to meet and act with the delegations of such other States as might see fit to be represented. The communication of the minority party in Rhode Island was received and read, and the interests of that State were attended to throughout the proceedings. We are now carefully to observe the position of the States when thus assembled in Convention. Their meeting was purely voluntary; they met as equals; and they were sovereign political communities, whom no power could rightfully coerce into a change of their condition, and with whom such a change must be the result of their own free and intelligent choice, governed by no other than the force of circumstances. That they were independent of foreign control was ascertained by the Declaration of Independence, by the war, and by the Treaty of Peace. That they were independent of each other, except so far as they had made certain mutual stipulations in the Articles of Confederation, was the necessary result of the events which had made the people of each State its rightful and exclusive sovereigns. We must recur, therefore, to the Articles of Confederation for the purpose of determining the nature of the position in which the States now stood.