Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/182

166 we inherit from our British ancestors. And I am free to own that, if you cannot love a republican government, you may love the British monarchy; for, although the king is not sufficiently responsible, the responsibility of his agents, and the efficient checks interposed by the British Constitution, render it less dangerous than other monarchies, or oppressive tyrannical aristocracies. What are the checks of exposing accounts? The checks upon paper are inefficient and nugatory. Can you search your President's closet? Is this a real check? We ought to be exceedingly cautious in giving up this life, this soul, of money, this power of taxation, to Congress. What powerful check is there here to prevent the most extravagant and profligate squandering of the public money? What security have we in money matters? Inquiry is precluded by this Constitution. I never wish to see Congress supplicate the states. But it is more abhorrent to my mind to give them an unlimited and unbounded command over our souls, our lives, our purses, without any check or restraint. How are you to keep inquiry alive? How discover their conduct? We are told, by that paper, that a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. Here is a beautiful check! What time? Here is the utmost latitude left. If those who are in Congress please to put that construction upon it, the words of the Constitution will be satisfied by publishing those accounts once in one hundred years. They may publish or not, as they please. Is this like the present despised system, whereby the accounts are to be published monthly?

I come now to speak something of requisitions, which the honorable gentleman thought so truly contemptible and disgraceful. That incorrigible gentleman, being a child of the revolution, must recollect with gratitude the glorious effects of requisitions. It is an idea that must be grateful to every American. An English army was sent to compel us to pay money contrary to our. consent—to force us, by arbitrary and tyrannical coercion, to satisfy their unbounded demands. We wished to pay with our own consent. Rather than pay against our consent, we engaged in that bloody contest which terminated so gloriously. By requisitions we pay with our own consent; by the means we have triumphed in the most arduous struggle that ever tried the virtue of man