Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/303

.] with requisitions, the alternative proposed will operate unequally, by taxing those who may have already paid, as well as those who have not, and involving the innocent in the crimes of the guilty. Suppose the new government fully vested with authority to raise taxes; it will also operate unequally. To make up antecedent deficiencies, they will lay more taxes the next succeeding year. By this means, those persons from whom a full proportion shall have been extracted will be saddled with a share of the deficiencies, as well as those who shall not have discharged their full portion. This mode, then, will have precisely the same unequal and unjust operation as the other.

I said, yesterday, that there were one thousand five hundred representatives, and one hundred and sixty senators, who transacted the affairs of the different states. But we are told that this great number is unnecessary, and that in the multitude of counsellors there is folly instead of wisdom; that they are a dead weight on the public business, which is said in all public assemblies to devolve on a few. This may in some degree be true, but it will not apply in the great latitude as mentioned by the gentleman. If ten men in our Assembly do the public business, may not the same observation extend to Congress? May not five men do the public business of the Union? But there is a great difference between the objects of legislation in Congress and those of the state legislatures. If the former be more complicated, there is a greater necessity of a full and adequate representation. It must be confessed that it is highly improper to trust our liberty and property in the hands of so few persons, if they were any thing less than divine. But it seems that, in this contest of power, the state governments have the advantage. I am of opinion that it will be directly the reverse. What influence can the state governments be supposed to have, after the loss of their most important rights? Will not the diminution of their power and influence be an augmentation of those of the general government? Will not the officers of the general government receive higher compensation for their services than those of the state governments? Will not the most influential men be employed by Congress? I think the state governments will be contemned and despised as soon as they give up the power of direct