Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/495

.] that he would, if necessary, display his feelings more fully on the subject another time.

Mr. GEORGE MASON. Mr. Chairman, the debt is transferred to Congress, but not the means of paying it. They cannot pay it any other way than according to the nominal value; for they are prohibited from making ex post facto laws; and it would be ex post facto, to all intents and purposes, to pay off creditors with less than the nominal sum which they were originally promised. But the honorable gentleman has called to his aid technical definitions. He says, that ex post facto laws relate solely to criminal matters. I beg leave to differ from him. Whatever it may be at the bar, or in a professional line, I conceive that, according to the common acceptation of the words, ex post facto laws and retrospective laws are synonymous terms. Are we to trust business of this sort to technical definition? The contrary is the plain meaning of the words. Congress has no power to scale this money. The states are equally precluded. The debt is transferred without the means of discharging it. Implication will not do. The means of paying it are expressly withheld. When this matter comes before the federal judiciary, they must determine according to this Constitution. It says, expressly, that they shall not make ex post facto laws. Whatever may be the professional meaning, yet the general meaning of ex post facto law is an act having a retrospective operation. This construction is agreeable to its primary etymology. Will it not be the duty of the federal court to say that such laws are prohibited? This goes to the destruction and annihilation of all the citizens of the United States, to enrich a few. Are we to part with every shilling of our property, and be reduced to the lowest insignificancy, to aggrandize a few speculators? Let me mention a remarkable effect this Constitution will have. How stood our taxes before this Constitution was introduced? Requisitions were made on the state legislatures, and, if they were unjust, they could be refused. If we were called upon to pay twenty millions, shilling for shilling, or at the rate of one for forty, our legislature could refuse it, and remonstrate against the injustice of the demand. But now this could not be done; for direct taxation is brought home to us. The federal officer collects immediately of the planters. When it withholds the only possible means of