Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/322

306 cannot produce the inconvenience here dreaded, because they are executed by the same officer. Is it not in the power of the general government to employ the state officers? Is nothing to be left to future legislation, or must every thing be immutably fixed in the Constitution? Where exclusive power is given to the Union, there can be no interference. Where the general and state legislatures have concurrent power, such regulations will be made as shall be found necessary to exclude interferences and other inconveniences. It will be their interest to make regulations.

It has been said that there is no similarity between petty corporations and independent states. I admit that, in many points of view, there is a great dissimilarity; but in others, there is a striking similarity between them, which illustrates what is before us. Have we not seen, in our own country, (as has been already suggested in the course of the debates,) concurrent collections of taxes going on at once, without producing any inconvenience? We have seen three distinct collections of taxes, for three distinct purposes. Has it not been possible for collections of taxes, for parochial, county, and state purposes, to go on at the same time? Every gentleman must know that this is now the case; and though there be a subordination in these cases which will not be in the general government, yet in practice it has been found that these different collections have been concurrently carried on, with convenience to the people, without clashing with one another, and without deriving their harmony from the circumstance of being subordinate to one legislative body. The taxes will be laid for different purposes. The members of the one government, as well as of the other, are the agents of, and subordinate to, the people. I conceive that the collection of the taxes of the one will not impede that of the other, and that there can be no interference. This concurrent collection appears to me neither chimerical nor impracticable.

He compares resistance of the people to collectors to refusal of requisitions. This goes against all government. It is as much as to urge that there should be no legislature. The gentlemen, who favored us with their observations on this subject, seemed to reason on a supposition that the general government was confined, by the paper on your table, to lay general, uniform taxes. Is it necessary that there should be