change of men. A guaranty by the National authority would be as much levelled against the usurpations of rulers, as against the ferments and outrages of faction and sedition in the community.
The principle of regulating the contributions of the States to the common treasury by quotas is another fundamental error in the Confederation. Its repugnancy to an adequate supply of the National exigencies has been already pointed out, and has sufficiently appeared from the trial which has been made of it. I speak of it now solely with a view to equality among the States. Those who have been accustomed to contemplate the circumstances which produce constitutional wealth, must be satisfied that there is no common standard or barometer, by which the degrees of it can be ascertained. Neither the value of lands, nor the numbers of the People, which have been successively proposed as the rule of State contributions, has any pretension to being a just representative. If we compare the wealth of the United Netherlands with that of Russia or Germany, or even of France; and if we at the same time compare the total value of the lands and the aggregate population of that contracted district with the total value of the lands and the aggregate population of the immense regions of either of the three last-mentioned countries, we shall at once discover, that there is no comparison between the proportion of either of these two objects, and that of the relative wealth of those nations. If the like parallel were to be run between several of the American States, it would furnish a like result. Let Virginia be contrasted with North Carolina, Pennsylvania with Connecticut, or Maryland with New Jersey, and we shall be convinced that the respective abilities of those States, in relation to revenue, bear little or no analogy to their comparative stock in lands or to their comparative population. The position
