Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/257

.] navigation of that river will increase the impost. Are not the United States as much interested as the people of Kentucky to retain that navigation? Congress will have as much interest in it as any inhabitant of that country, and must exert themselves for it. Kentucky will have taxes to pay.

How can they pay them without navigation? It will be to their interest to have it in their power to navigate the Mississippi, and raise money by imposts. It will be to the interest of all the states, as it will increase the general resources of the united community. Considering Kentucky as an independent state, she will, under the present system, and without the navigation of that river, be furnished with the articles of her consumption through the medium of the: importing states. She will, therefore, be taxed by every importing state. If the new Constitution takes place, the amounts of duties on imported articles will go into the general treasury, by which means Kentucky will participate an equal advantage with the importing states. It will, then, be clearly to the advantage of the inhabitants of that country that it should take place. He tells us that he prays for union. What kind of union? A union of the whole, I suppose, if it could be got on his terms. If on such terms, he will adopt it. If not, he will recur to partial confederacies. He will attempt amendments. If he cannot obtain them, then he will choose a partial confederacy. Now, I beg every gentleman in this committee, who would not sacrifice the union, to attend to the situation in which they are about to place themselves.

I beg gentlemen seriously to reflect on this important business. They say amendments may be previously obtained, but acknowledged to be difficult. Will you join in an opposition that so directly tends to disunion? Can any member here think of disunion, or a partial confederacy, without horror? Yet both are expressly preferred to union, unless this system be amended previously. But, says the worthy member, why should not previous amendments be obtained? Will they not be agreed to, as the eight adopting states are friends to the union? But what follows? If they are so, they will agree to subsequent amendments. If you recommend alterations after ratifying, the friendship of the adopting states to the union, and the desires of several of them to have amendments, will lead them to gratify every 3121