Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/343

.] of power between them. Each is limited to its own particular objects, and all subordinate to one supreme, controlling power—the legislature. The county courts have power over the county and parish collections, and can constantly redress any injuries or oppressions committed by the collectors. Will this be the case in the federal courts? I hope they will not have federal courts in every county. If they will, the state courts will be debased and stripped of their cognizance, and utterly abolished. Yet, if there be no power in the country to call them to account, they will more flagrantly trample on your rights. Does the honorable gentleman mean that the thirteen states will have thirteen different tax laws? Is this the expedient which is to be substituted for the unequal and unjust one of uniform taxes? If so, many horrors present themselves to my mind. They may be imaginary, but it appears to my mind to be the most abominable system that could be imagined. It will destroy every principle of responsibility. It will be destructive of that fellow-feeling, and consequent confidence, which ought to subsist between the representatives and the represented. We shall then be taxed by those who bear no part in the taxes themselves, and who, consequently, will be regardless of our interest in imposing them upon us. The efforts of our ten men will avail very little when opposed by the northern majority. If our ten men be disposed to sacrifice our interest, we cannot detect them. Under the color of being outnumbered by the northern representatives, they can always screen themselves. When they go to the general government, they may make a bargain with the northern delegates. They may agree to tax our citizens in any manner which may be proposed by the northern members; in consideration of which, the latter may make them some favorite concessions. The Northern States will never assent to regulations promotive of southern aggrandizement. Notwithstanding what gentlemen say of the probable virtue of our representatives, I dread the depravity of human nature. I wish to guard against it by proper checks, and trust nothing to accident or chance. I will never depend on so slender a protection as the possibility of being represented by virtuous men.

Will not thirteen different objects of taxation in the thirteen different states involve us in an infinite number of