upon this State, or upon one or two more? Is it not our interest, on mere calculations of State policy, to promote a measure which, operating under the same regulations in every State, must produce an equal, or nearly equal, effect everywhere, and oblige all the States to share the common burthen?
If the impost is granted to the United States, with the power of levying it, it must have a proportionate effect in all the States, for the same mode of collection everywhere will have nearly the same return everywhere.
What must be the final issue of the present state of things? Will the few States that now contribute be willing to contribute much longer? Shall we ourselves be long content with bearing the burthen singly? Will not our zeal for a particular system soon give way to the pressure of so unequal a weight? And if all the States cease to pay, what is to become of the Union? It is sometimes asked: Why do not Congress oblige the States to do their duty? But where are the means? Where are the fleets and armies, where the Federal treasury to support those fleets and armies, to enforce the requisitions of the Union? All methods short of coercion, have repeatedly been tried in vain.
Let us now proceed to another most important inquiry. How are we to pay our foreign debt? This, I think, is estimated at about $7,000,000, which will every year increase with the accumulations of interest. If we pay neither principal nor interest, we not only abandon all pretensions to character as a nation, but we endanger the public peace. However it may be in our power to evade the just demands of our domestic creditors, our foreign creditors must and will be paid.
They have power to enforce their demands, and sooner or later they may be expected to do it. It is not my intention to endeavor to excite the apprehensions of the committee, but I would appeal to their prudence. A discreet attention to the consequences of national measures is no impeachment of our firmness.
The foreign debt, I say, must sooner or later be paid, and the longer provision is delayed the heavier it must fall at last.
We require about 1,600,000 dollars to discharge the interest and instalments of the present year, about a million annually upon an average, for ten years more, and about 300,000 dollars for another ten years.
The product of the impost may be computed at about a million of dollars annually. It is an increasing fund. This fund would not only suffice for the discharge of the foreign debt, but important operations might be ingrafted upon it towards the extinguishment of the domestic debt.
Is it possible to hesitate about the propriety of adopting a resource so easy in itself and so extensive in its effects?
Here I expect I may be told there is no objection to employing this resource. The act of the last session does it. The only dispute is about the mode. We are willing to grant the money, but not the power required from us. Money will pay our debts; power may destroy our liberties.
It has been insinuated that nothing but a lust of power would have prevented Congress from accepting the grant in the shape it has already passed the Legislature. This is a severe charge. If true, it ought undoubtedly to prevent our going a step further. But it is easy to show that Congress could not have accepted our grant without removing themselves further from the object than they now are. To gain one State they must have lost all the others. The grants of every State are accompanied with a condition that similar grants be made by the other States. It is not denied that our act is essentially different from theirs. Their acts give the United States the power of collecting the duty; ours reserves it to the State, and makes it receivable in paper-money.
The immediate consequences of accepting our grant would be a relinquishment of the grants of other States. They must take the matter up anew, and do the work over again to accommodate it to our standard. In order to anchor one State, would it have been wise to set twelve, or at least eleven others, afloat?
It is said, that the States which have granted more would certainly be willing to grant less. They would easily accommodate their acts to that of New York, as more favorable to their own power and security.
But would Massachusetts and Virginia, which have no paper-money of their own, accede to a plan that permitted other States to pay in paper while they paid in specie? Would they consent that their citizens should pay twenty shillings in the pound, while the citizens of Rhode Island paid only four, the citizens of North Carolina ten, and of other States in different degrees of inequality, in proportion to the relative depreciation of their paper? Is it wise, in this State, to cherish a plan that gives such an advantage to the citizens of other States over its own?
The paper-money of the State of New York, in most transactions, is equal to gold and silver; that of Rhode Island is depreciated to five for one; that of North Carolina to two for one; that of South Carolina may perhaps be worth fifteen shillings in the pound.
If the States pay the duties in paper, is it not evident that for every pound of that duty consumed by the citizen of New York he would pay twenty shillings, while the citizen of South Carolina would pay fifteen shillings; of North Carolina, ten shillings; and Rhode Island, only four!
This consideration alone is sufficient to condemn the plan of our grant of last session, and to prove incontestably that the States which are averse to emitting a paper currency, or have it in their power to support one when emitted, would never come into it.
Again, would those States which by their public acts demonstrate a conviction that the powers of the Union require augmentation; which are conscious of energy in their own administration—would they be willing to concur in a plan which left the collection of the duties in the hands of each State; and of course subject to all the inequalities which a more or less vigorous system of collection would produce?
This too is an idea which ought to have great weight with us. We have better habits of government than are to be found in some of the States; and our constitution admits of more energy than the constitution of most of the other States. The duties, therefore, would be more effectually collected with us than in such States, and this would have a similar effect to the depreciation of the money, in imposing a greater burthen on the citizens of this State.
If any State should incline to evade the payment of the duties, having the collection in its own hands, nothing would be easier than to effect it, and without materially sacrificing appearances.
It is manifest, from this view of the subject, that we have the strongest reasons, as a State, to depart from our own act; and that it would have been highly injudicious in Congress to have accepted it.
If there even had been a prospect of the concurrence of the other States in the plan, how inadequate would it have been to the public exigencies, fettered with the embarrassments of a depreciating paper!
It is to no purpose to say, that the faith of the State was pledged by the act to make the paper equal to gold and silver; and that the other States would be obliged to do the same. What greater dependence can be had on the faith of the States pledged to this measure, than on the faith they pledged in the Confederation sanctioned by a solemn appeal to heaven? If the obligation of faith in one case has had so little influence upon their conduct in respect to the requisitions of Congress, what hope can there be that they would have greater influences in respect to the deficiencies of the paper-money?
There yet remains an important light in which to consider the subject in the way of revenue. It is a clear point that we cannot carry the duties upon imports to the same extent by separate arrangements as by a general plan—we must regulate ourselves by what we find done in the neighboring States: while Pennsylvania has only two and a half per cent. on her importations, we cannot greatly exceed her. To go much beyond it would injure our commerce in a variety of ways, and would defeat itself. While the ports of Connecticut and Jersey are open to the introduction of goods free from duty, and
