Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/302

286 not be in their power to raise money on any emergency? Will not their credit be competent to procure any sum they may want? Gentlemen agree that it would be proper to imitate the conduct of other countries, and Great Britain particularly, in borrowing money, and establishing funds for the payment of the interest on the loans; that, when the government is properly organized, and its competency to raise money made known, public and private confidence will be the result, and men will readily lend it any sums it may stand in need of. If this should be a fact, and the reasoning well founded, it will clearly follow that it will be practicable to borrow money in cases of great difficulty and danger, on the principles contended for by the opposition; and this observation must supersede the necessity of granting them the powers of direct taxation in the first instance, provided the right is secured in the second.

As to the idea of making extensive loans for extinguishing the present domestic debt, it is what I have not by any means in contemplation. I think it would be unnecessary, unjust, and impolitic. This country is differently situated and circumstanced from all other countries in the world. It is now thinly inhabited, but daily increasing in numbers. It would not be politic to lay grievous taxes and burdens at present. If our numbers double in twenty-five years, as is generally believed, we ought to spare the present race, because there will be double the number of persons to pay in that period of time; so that, were our matters so arranged that the interest could be paid regularly, and that any one might get his money when he thought proper, as is the case now in England, it would be all that public faith would require. Place the subject, however, in every point of view—whether as it relates to raising money for the immediate exigencies of the state, or for the extinction of the foreign or the domestic debt—still it must be obvious, if a proper confidence is placed in the acknowledgment of the right of taxation in the second instance, that every purpose can be answered.

However, sir, if the states are not blameless, why has not the Congress used that coercion which is vested in their government? It is an unquestionable fact that the Belgic republic, on a similar occasion, by an actual exertion of force, brought a delinquent province to a proper sense of justice. The gentleman said that, in case of a partial compliance