Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v2.djvu/148

132 neglect or refuse that power vested in them, and to be exercised by them if they please. Your excellency proposes, in substance, the same restriction, which, I should think, cannot but meet with their full approbation.

The power to be given to Congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, has alarmed the minds of some gentlemen. They tell you, sir, that the exercise of the power of laying and collecting direct taxes might greatly distress the several states, and render them incapable of raising moneys for the payment of their respective state debts, or for any purpose. They say the impost and excise may be made adequate to the public emergencies in the time of peace, and ask why the laying direct taxes may not be confined to a time of war. You are pleased to propose to us that it be a recommendation, that "Congress do not lay direct taxes, but when the moneys arising from the impost and excise shall be insufficient for the public exigencies." The prospect of approaching war might necessarily create an expense beyond the productions of impost and excise. How, then, would the government have the necessary means of providing for the public defence? Must they not have recourse to other resources besides impost and excise? The people, while they watch for their own safety, must and will have a just confidence in a legislature of their own election. The approach of war is seldom, if ever, without observation: it is generally observed by the people at large; and I believe no legislature of a free country would venture a measure which should directly touch the purses of the people, under a mere pretence, or unless they could show, to the people's satisfaction, that there had been, in fact, a real public exigency to justify it.

Your excellency's next proposition is, to introduce the indictment of a grand jury, before any person shall be tried for any crime, by which he may incur infamous punishment, or loss of life; and it is followed by another, which recommends a trial by jury in civil actions between citizens of different states, if either of the parties shall request it. These, and several others which I have mentioned, are so evidently beneficial as to need no comment of mine. And they are all, in every particular, of so general a nature, and so equally interesting to every state, that I cannot but persuade myself to think they would all readily join with us in