When the Maryland legislature came to act on the report, it proposed that Pennsylvania and Delaware should be invited to join with them in formulating a common commercial policy.

Virginia then went one step farther and invited all the other States to send commissioners to a general trade convention and later announced Annapolis as the place of meeting and set the time for September, 1786.
This action was unconstitutional and was so recognized, for James Madison notes that "from the Legislative Journals of Virginia it appears, that a vote to apply for a sanction of Congress was followed by a vote against a communication of the Compact to Congress," and he mentions other similar violations of the central authority.

That this did not attract more attention was probably due to the public interest being absorbed just at that time by the paper money agitation.

Then, too, the men concerned seem to have been willing to avoid publicity.
Their purposes are well brought out in a letter of Monsieur Louis Otto, French Charge d'Affaires, written on October 10, 1786, to the Comte de Vergennes, Minister for Foreign Affairs, though their motives may be somewhat misinterpreted.
"Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated "gentlemen," who, by reason of their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, or the offices they hold, aspire to a preeminence which the people refuse to grant them; and, although many of these men have betrayed the interests of their order to gain popularity, there reigns among them a connection so much the more intimate as they almost all of them dread the efforts of the people to despoil them of their possessions, and, moreover, they are creditors, and therefore interested in strengthening the government, and watching over the execution of the laws.
"These men generally pay very heavy taxes, while the small proprietors escape the vigilance of the collectors.

The majority of them being merchants, it is for their interest to establish the credit of the United States in Europe on a solid foundation by the exact payment of debts, and to grant to congress powers extensive enough to compel the people to contribute for this purpose.