could not legally be opposed or controled; yet, a law abrogating or preventing the collection of a tax laid by the authority of a state, (unless upon imports and exports) would not be the supreme law of the land, but an usurpation of a power not granted by the constitution. As far as an improper accumulation of taxes, on the same object, might tend to render the collection difficult or precarious, this would be a mutual inconvenience, not arising from a superiority or defect of power on either side, but from an injudicious exercise of power by one or the other, in a manner equally disadvantageous to both. It is to be hoped and presumed, however, that mutual interests would dictate a concert in this respect, which would avoid any material inconvenience. The inference from the whole is....that the individual states would, under the proposed constitution, retain an independent and uncontrolable authority to raise revenue to any extent of which they may stand in need, by every kind of taxation, except duties on imports and exports. It will be shown in the next paper, that this concurrent jurisdiction in the article of taxation, was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, in respect to this branch of power, of state authority to that of the union.
Publius.
No. XXXIV.
By Alexander Hamilton.
The same subject continued.
I flatter myself it has been clearly shown in my last number, that the particular states, under the proposed constitution, would have co-equal authority with the union in the article of revenue, except as to duties on imports. As this leaves open to the states far the greatest part of the resources of the community, there can be no colour for the assertion, that they would not possess means as abundant as could be desired, for the supply of their own wants, independent of all external
