The Shays rebellion and the quarrel about the Mississippi river had by this time alarmed people so that it began to be generally admitted that the federal government must be in some way strengthened. If there were any doubt as to this, it was removed by the action of New York. An amendment to the Articles of Confederation had been proposed, giving Congress the power of levying customs-duties and appointing the collectors. By the summer of 1786 all the states except New York had consented to this. But in order to amend the articles, unanimous consent was necessary, and in February, 1787, New York's refusal defeated the amendment. Congress was thus left without any immediate means of raising a revenue, and it became quite clear that something must be done without delay. [Sidenote: The Federal Convention at Philadelphia, May-Sept., 1787.] The famous Federal Convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, and remained in session four months, with Washington presiding. Its work was the framing of the government under which we are now living, and in which the evils of the old confederation have been avoided. The trouble had all the while been how to get the whole American people _represented_ in some body that could thus rightfully _tax_ the whole American people. This was the question which the Albany Congress had tried to settle in 1754, and which the Federal Convention did settle in 1787. In the old confederation, starting with the Continental Congress in 1774, the government was all vested in a single body which represented states, but did not represent individual persons. It was for that reason that it was called a congress rather than a parliament. It was more like a congress of European states than the legislative body of a nation, such as the English parliament was. It had no executive and no judiciary. It could not tax, and it could not enforce its decrees. [Sidenote: The new government, in which the Revolution was consummated, 1789.] The new constitution changed all this by creating the House of Representatives which stood in the same relation to the whole American people as the legislative assembly of each single state to the people of that state. In this body the people were represented, and could therefore tax themselves. At the same time in the Senate the old equality between the states was preserved. All control over commerce, currency, and finance was lodged in this new Congress, and absolute free trade was established between the states. In the office of President a strong executive was created. And besides all this there was a system of federal courts for deciding questions arising under federal laws. Most remarkable of all, in some respects, was the power given to the federal Supreme Court, of deciding, in special cases, whether laws passed by the several states, or by Congress itself, were conformable to the Federal Constitution.