Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/184

168 congressional taxation will have another oppressive operation. The sheriff comes to-day as a state collector. Next day he is federal. How are you to fix him? How will it be possible to discriminate oppressions committed in one capacity from those perpetrated in the other? Will not this ingenuity perplex the simple and honest planter? This will at least involve in difficulties those who are unacquainted with legal ingenuity. When you fix him, where are you to punish him? for I suppose they will not stay in our courts: they must go to the federal court; for, if I understand that paper right, all controversies arising under that Constitution, or under the laws made in pursuance thereof, are to be tried in that court. When gentlemen told us that this part deserved the least exception, I was in hopes they would prove that there was plausibility in their suggestions, and that oppression would probably not follow. Are we not told that it shall be treason to levy war against the United States? Suppose an insult offered to the federal laws at an immense distance from Philadelphia,—will this be deemed treason? And shall a man be dragged many hundred miles, to be tried as a criminal, for having, perhaps justifiably, resisted an unwarrantable attack upon his person or property? I am not well acquainted with federal jurisprudence; but it appears to me that these oppressions must result from this part of the plan. It is at least doubtful; and where there is even a possibility of such evils, they ought to be guarded against.

There are to be a number of places fitted out for arsenals and dockyards in the different states. Unless you sell to Congress such places as are proper for these, within your state, you will not be consistent after adoption: it results, therefore, clearly, that you are to give into their hands all such places as are fit for strongholds. When you have these fortifications and garrisons within your state, your legislature will have no power over them, though they see the most dangerous insults offered to the people daily. They are also to have magazines in each state. These depositories for arms, though within the state, will be free from the control of its legislature. Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of