Connecticut, divided; (Mr. Dyer, ay; Mr. Wolcott, no;) New York, no; New Jersey, no; Pennsylvania, ay; (Mr. Wilson and Mr. Fitzsimmons, no;) Virginia, ay; Mr. Bland, no; North Carolina, ay; South Carolina, ay: so the question was lost.
On the question whether the appointment of collectors of the impost shall be left to the states, the collectors to be under the control of, and be amenable to, Congress, there were seven ayes; New York and Pennsylvania being no, and New Jersey divided.
Thursday, February 20.
The motion for limiting the impost to twenty-five years having been yesterday lost, and some of the gentlemen who were in the negative desponding of an indefinite grant of it from the states, the motion was reconsidered.
Mr. WOLCOTT and Mr. HAMILTON repeat the inadequacy of a definite term. Mr. RAMSAY and Mr. WILLIAMSON repeat the improbability of an indefinite term being acceded to by the states, and the expediency of preferring a limited impost to a failure of it altogether.
Mr. MERCER was against the impost altogether, but would confine his opposition within Congress. He was in favor of the limitation, as an alleviation of the evil.
Mr. FITZSIMMONS animadverted on Mr. Mercer's insinuation yesterday touching the loan-office creditors, and the policy of dividing them from the military creditors; reprobated every measure which contravened the principles of justice and public faith; and asked, whether it were likely that Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, to whose citizens half the loan-office debt was owing, would concur with Virginia, whose citizens had lent but little more than three hundred thousand dollars in any plan that did not provide for that in common with other debts of the United States. He was against a limitation to twenty-five years.
Mr. LEE wished to know whether by loan-office creditors were meant the original subscribers or the present holders of the certificates, as the force of their demands may be affected by this consideration.
Mr. FITZSIMMOMS saw the scope of the question, and said that, if another scale of depreciation was seriously in view, he wished it to come out, that every one might know the course to be taken.
Mr. GORHAM followed the sentiments of the gentleman who last spoke; expressed his astonishment that a gentleman (Mr. Lee) who had enjoyed such opportunities of observing the nature of public credit should advance such doctrines as were fatal to it. He said it was time that this point should be explained; that if the former scale for the loan-office certificates was to be revised and reduced, as one member from Virginia (Mr. Mercer) contended, or a further scale to be made out for subsequent depreciation of certificates, as seemed to be the idea of the other member, (Mr. Lee,) the restoration of public credit was not only visionary, but the concurrence of the states in any arrangement whatever was not to be expected. He was in favor of the limitation, as necessary to overcome the objections of the states.
Mr. MERCER professed his attachment to the principles of justice, but declared that he thought the scale by which the loans had been valued unjust to the public, and that it ought to be revised and reduced.
On the question for the period of twenty-five years, it was decided in the affirmative, seven states being in favor of it; New Jersey and New York only being no.
Mr. MERCER called the attention of Congress to the case of the goods seized under a law of Pennsylvania, on which the committee had not yet reported, and wished that Congress would come to some resolution declaratory of their rights, and which would lead to an effectual interposition on the part of the legislature of Pennsylvania. After much conversation on the subject, in which the members were somewhat divided as to the degree of peremptoriness with which the state of Pennsylvania should be called on, the resolution on the Journal, which is inserted below, was finally adopted; having been drawn up by the secretary, and put into the hands of a member, the resolution passed without any dissent.[1]
Resolved, That it does not appear to Congress that any abuse has been made of the passport granted by the commander-in-chief for the protection of clothing and other necessaries sent from New York, in the ship Amazon, for the use of the British and German prisoners of war.
- ↑ The result proved that mildness was the soundest policy—the legislature, in consequence, having declared the law under which the goods were seized to be void, as contradictory to the Federal Constitution. Some of the members, in conversation, said that, if Congress had declared the law to be void, the displeasure of the legislature might possibly have produced a different issue.
