functions. A complete power, therefore, to procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every Constitution. From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue: either the People must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the Government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is, that he permits the Bashaws or Governors of provinces to pillage the People without mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need, to satisfy his own exigencies, and those of the State. In America, from a like cause, the Government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt, that the happiness of the People in both countries would be promoted by competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues which the necessities of the public might require?
The present Confederation, feeble as it is, intended to repose in the United States, an unlimited power of providing for the pecuniary wants of the Union. But proceeding upon an erroneous principle, it has been done in such a manner as entirely to have frustrated the intention. Congress, by the Articles which compose that compact, (as has already been stated,) are authorized to ascertain and call for any sums of money necessary, in their judgment, to the service of the United States; and their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of apportionment, are, in every constitutional sense,
