arising thereon, and on the conduct of the officers appointed to execute these laws, and to collect these taxes and duties, so various in their kinds, is taken away from the courts of justice of the different states, and confined to the courts of the general government, there to be heard and determined by judges holding their offices under the appointment, not of the states, but of the general government.
Many of the members, and myself in the number, thought that states were much better judges of the circumstances of their citizens, and what sum of money could be collected from them by direct taxation, and of the manner in which it could be raised with the greatest ease and convenience to their citizens, than the general government could be; and that the general government ought not to have the power of laying direct taxes in any case but in that of the delinquency of a state. Agreeably to this sentiment, I brought in a proposition on which a vote of the Convention was taken. The proposition was as follows: "And whenever the legislature of the United States shall find it necessary that revenue should be raised by direct taxation, having apportioned the same by the above rule, requisitions shall be made of the respective states to pay into the Continental treasury their respective quotas within a time in the said requisition to be specified; and in case of any of the states failing to comply with such requisition, then, and then only, to have power to devise and pass acts directing the mode and authorizing the collection of the same."
Had this proposition been acceded to, the dangerous and oppressive power in the general government of imposing direct taxes on the inhabitants, which it now enjoys in all cases, would have been only vested in it, in case of the non-compliance of a state, as a punishment for its delinquency, and would have ceased the moment that the state complied with the requisition. But the proposition was rejected by a majority, consistent with their aim and desire of increasing the power of the general government as far as possible, and destroying the powers and influence of the states. And though there is a provision that all duties, imposts, and excises, shall be uniform,—that is, to be laid to the same amount on the same articles in each state,—yet this will not prevent Congress from having it in their power to cause them to fall very unequally, and much heavier on some states than on others, because these duties may be laid on articles but little or not at all used in some states, and of absolute necessity for the use and consumption of others; in which case, the first would pay little or no part of the revenue arising therefrom, while the whole, or nearly the whole, of it would be paid by the last, to wit, the states which use and consume the articles on which the imposts and excises are laid.
By our original Articles of Confederation, the Congress have power to borrow money and emit bills of credit on the credit of the United States; agreeable to which was the report on this system, as made by the committee of detail. When we came to this part of the report, a motion was made to strike out the words "to emit bills of credit." Against the motion we urged, that it would be improper to deprive the Congress of that power; that it would be a novelty unprecedented to establish a government which should not have such authority; that it was impossible to look forward into futurity so far as to decide that events might not happen that should render the exercise of such a power absolutely necessary; and that we doubted whether, if a war should take place, it would be possible for this country to defend itself without having recourse to paper credit, in which case there would be a necessity of becoming a prey to our enemies,
vol. i.47
