Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/183

.] We fought then for what we are contending for now—to prevent an arbitrary deprivation of our property, contrary to our consent and inclination. I shall be told in this place that those who are to tax us are our representatives. To this I answer, that there is no real check to prevent their ruining us. There is no actual responsibility. The only semblance of a check is the negative power of not reëlecting them. This, sir, is but a feeble barrier, when their personal interest, their ambition and avarice, come to be put in contrast with the happiness of the people. All checks founded on any thing but self-love will not avail. The Constitution reflects in the most degrading and mortifying manner on the virtue, integrity, and wisdom of the state legislatures; it presupposes that the chosen few who go to Congress will have more upright hearts, and more enlightened minds, than those who are members of the individual legislatures. To suppose that ten gentlemen shall have more real, substantial merit than one hundred and seventy, is humiliating to the last degree. If, sir, the diminution of numbers be an augmentation of merit, perfection must centre in one. If you have the faculty of discerning spirits, it is better to point out at once the man who has the most illumined qualities. If ten men be better than one hundred and seventy, it follows of necessity that one is better than ten — the choice is more refined.

Such is the danger of the abuse of implied power, that it would be safer at once to have seven representatives, the number to which we are now entitled, than depend on the uncertain and ambiguous language of that paper. The number may be lessened, instead of being increased; and yet, by argumentative, constructive, implied power, the proportion of taxes may continue the same, or be increased. Nothing is more perilous than constructive power, which gentlemen are so willing to trust their happiness to.

If sheriffs prove now an overmatch for our legislature, if their ingenuity has eluded the vigilance of our laws, how will the matter be amended when they come clothed with federal authority? A strenuous argument offered by gentlemen is, that the same sheriffs may collect for the Continental and state treasuries. I have before shown that this must have an inevitable tendency to give a decided preference to the federal treasury in the actual collections, and to throw all deficiencies on the state. This imaginary remedy for the evil of