Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/321

states, from New Hampshire to Georgia. By this mode, also, and for the same reason, the dangers of intrigue and corruption are avoided, and a variety of other inconveniences, which must have arisen if the electors from the different states had been directed to assemble at one place, or if either branch of the legislature (in case the majority of electors did not fix upon the same person) might have chosen a President who had not been previously put in nomination by the people. I have before spoken of the policy and justice of vesting the majority of Congress with the power of making commercial regulations, and the necessity there is, in all well-constituted republics, that the majority should control the minority; and I should have had a very strong objection if it had contained the restrictive clause the honorable gentleman appears so anxious for, "that Congress should not have it in their power to prevent the ships of any nation from entering our ports." I cannot think it would have been prudent or fitting to have given the ships of all foreign nations a constitutional right to enter our ports whenever they pleased, and this, too, notwithstanding we might be at war with them; or they may have passed laws denying us the privileges they grant to all other commercial nations; or circumstances not now foreseen might render it necessary for us to prohibit them. Such a clause would have injured the Eastern States, would have been eventually detrimental to ourselves, and would have in fact amounted to a declaration that we were resolved never to have a navy. To such a clause the general declared he never would have consented, and desired the gentleman to produce an instance of any independent power who did not give exclusive advantages to their own shipping. He then took notice that Chancellor Matthews had fully answered what had been alleged concerning the exorbitant freights we should be obliged to pay, and had clearly shown that no danger was to be apprehended on that subject; and that the Eastern States could soon furnish us, and all the Southern States, with a sufficient number of ships to carry off our produce. With regard to the general government imposing internal taxes upon us, he contended that it was absolutely necessary they should have such a power: requisitions had been in vain tried every year since the ratification of the old Confederation, and not a single state had
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