The sixty cents are deemed applicable only to the services enjoined by the twenty-seventh section.
A revision of this section will upon accurate examination be found eligible for other reasons, which for the sake of brevity are omitted.
The foregoing are the principal remarks which occur on the provisions of the several acts, on which the Secretary has been directed to report. These acts have fulfilled their objects in all respects as well as could reasonably have been expected from the first essay on so difficult a subject. It was foreseen that experience would suggest the propriety of corrections in the system, and it is equally to be inferred that further experiment will manifest the expediency of further correction. The work must be progressive, since it can only be by successive improvements that it can be brought to the degree of perfection of which it is susceptible.
As connected with the difficulties that have occurred in the execution of the laws, which is the subject of this report, the Secretary begs leave, in the last place, to mention the want of an officer in each State, or other considerable subdivision of the United States, having the general superintendence of all the officers of the revenue within such State or subdivision.
Among the inconveniences attending it, is a great difficulty in drawing from the more remote ports the moneys which are there collected. As the course of business creates little or no demand at the seat of Government, or in its vicinity, for drafts upon such places, negotiations in this way are either very dilatory or impracticable; neither does the circulation of bank paper, from the same cause, extend to them.
This embarrassment would be remedied by having one person in each State, or in a district of the United States of convenient extent, charged with the receipt of all the moneys arising within it, and placed in point of residence where there was the greatest intercourse with the seat of Government. This would greatly facilitate negotiations between the treasury and distant parts of the Union, and would contribute to lessening the necessity for the transportation of specie.
But there are other reasons of perhaps still greater weight for the measure. It is, in the opinion of the Secretary, essential to a due supervision of the conduct of the particular officers engaged in the collection of the revenues, and to the purposes of exact and impartial information, as to the operation of the laws which relate to them. It is impossible that the first end can be answered by any attention or vigilance of an individual, or individuals, at the head of the treasury. Distance and the multiplicity of avocations are conclusive bars. And, however it may appear at first sight, that the second end may be attainable from the communications of those particular officers, yet, when it is considered how apt their representations will be to receive a tint from the personal interests of the individuals, and the local interests of districts, it must be perceived that there cannot always be sufficient reliance upon them, and that variances between them will not unfrequently serve rather to distract than to inform the judgment. Greater impartiality and, of course, better information may be expected from an officer who, standing in the same relation to a larger district, composed of several smaller districts, will be more likely to be free from the influence either of personal interests or local predilections, in reference to the parts.
The Secretary begs leave, with the utmost deference, to say that he considers an arrangement of this kind as of real importance to the public service and to the efficacious discharge of the trust reposed in him.
All of which is humbly submitted.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON,
Secretary of the Treasury.
ARREARS OF PAY
Hamilton to Washington
(Cabinet Paper).
Treasury Department, May 28, 1790.
The Secretary of the Treasury conceives it to be his duty most respectfully to represent to the President of the United States that there are in his judgment objections of a very serious and weighty nature to the resolutions of the two Houses of Congress of the twenty-first instant, concerning certain arrears of pay, due to the officers and soldiers of the lines of Virginia and North Carolina.
The third of these resolutions directs that in cases where payment has not been made to the original claimant in person, or to his representative, it shall be made to the original claimant, or to such person or persons only as shall produce a power of attorney duly attested by two justices of the peace of the county in which such person or persons reside, authorizing him or them to receive a certain specified sum.
By the laws of most if not all the States, claims of this kind are in their nature assignable for a valuable consideration; and the assignor may constitute the assignee his attorney or agent to receive the amount. The import of every such assignment is a contract, express or implied, on the part of the assignor, that the assignee shall receive the sum assigned to his own use. In making it no precise form is necessary, but any instrument competent to conveying with clearness and precision the sense of the parties, suffices; there is no need of the co-operation of any justice of the peace, or other magistrate whatever.
The practice of the Treasury and of the public officers in other departments, in the adjustment and satisfaction of claims upon the United States, has uniformly corresponded with the rules of that law.
A regulation, therefore, having a retrospective operation, and prescribing with regard to past transactions new and unknown requisites, by which the admission of claims is to be guided, is an infraction of the rights of individuals, acquired under pre-existing laws, and a contravention of the public faith, pledged by the course of public proceedings. It has consequently a tendency not less unfriendly to public credit than to the security of property.
Such is the regulation contained in the resolution above referred to. It defeats all previous assignments not accompanied with a power of attorney attested by two justices of the peace of the county where the assignor resides; a formality which, for obvious reasons, cannot be presumed to have attended any of them, and which does not appear to have been observed with respect to those upon which application for payment has hitherto been made.
It is to be remarked that the assignee has no method of compelling the assignor to perfect the transfer by a new instrument in conformity to the rule prescribed; if even the existence of such a power, the execution of which would involve a legal controversy, could be a satisfactory cause for altering by a new law that state of things which antecedent law and usage had established between the parties.
It is, perhaps too, questionable whether an assignee, however equitable his pretensions were, could, under the operation of the provision which has been recited, have any remedy whatever for the recovery of the money or value which he may have paid to the assignor.
It is not certain that a legislative act decreeing payment to a different person, would not be a legal bar; but if the existence of such a remedy were certain, it would be but a very inconclusive consideration. The assignment may have been a security for a precarious or desperate debt, which security will be wrested from the assignee; or it may have been a composition between an insolvent debtor and his creditor, and the only resource of the latter; or the assignor may be absent and incapable either of benefiting by the provision, or of being called to an account. And in every case the assignee would be left to the casualty of the ability of the assignor to repay; to the perplexity, trouble, and expense of a suit at law. In respect to the soldiers, the presumption
