Such sentiment among public men should have brought about a speedy amendment of the defective parts of the Articles. But, as Washington once said, the people were not yet sufficiently misled. Attempt after attempt was made to secure the necessary unanimous consent to an amendment. Congress begged the States to give over to it the collection of an impost or duty for a limited number of years or for a limited per cent.; to give to it authority to regulate foreign vessels in American ports; and to refrain from levying discriminating duties among themselves. The unanimous consent required by the Articles to make any amendment blocked these and all other proposed reforms. Sometimes twelve States would agree, but before the thirteenth could be won over, another would withdraw its consent. On one occasion, when Rhode Island alone held out, her delegates in Congress wrote to the governor of the State that their "reasonable and firm stand against the all-grasping hand of power in the case of duties had saved the United States!" Connecticut protested that such an addition to the functions of Congress as the collection of an impost would at one stroke vest that body with the power of the sword and the purse, and leave nothing of the individual States but an empty name. Others argued that with 320 million acres of land, which would bring an average of at least one dollar an acre, the General Government needed no other source of revenue. Unanimous consent to an amendment could never be secured. This was the lesson taught by the attempts. Aside from the difficulties arising from the defects of the Confederation experiment, the disorders in the national body were simply reflections of the turbulent spirit prevalent at the time. Suddenly emerged from the restraining hand of a mother country, misinterpreting the meaning of independence, confounding liberty with license, having lost the law-abiding sense in the treatment of the Tories, grown only too accustomed to the pleasures of mob law, the people were passing through the reassembling period which always follows a civil war. Peace is the normal condition of a people; war is the abnormal. Restraint, taxation, and obedience, it was supposed, had passed away with royalty and kingly prerogative. "Taxes and relaxed government agree but ill," observed the laconic Jay. From South Carolina, Edward Rutledge wrote to him, "It is really very curious to observe how the people of this world are made the dupes of a word. 'Liberty' is the motto; every attempt to restrain licentiousness or give efficacy to government is charged audaciously on the real advocates of freedom as an attack on liberty."