Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/63

1783.] requisition of Congress on the states for money is as much a law to them as their revenue acts, when passed, are laws to their respective citizens. If, for want of the faculty or means of enforcing a requisition, the law of Congress proves inefficient, does it not follow that, in order to fulfil the views of the Federal Constitution such a change should be made as will render it efficient? Without such efficiency the end of this Constitution, which is to preserve order and justice among the members of the Union, must fail; as without a like efficiency would the end of state constitutions, which is to preserve like order and justice among their respective members.

It has been objected, that the states have manifested such aversion to the impost on trade, as renders any recommendations of a general revenue hopeless and imprudent It must be admitted that the conduct of the states on that subject is less encouraging than were to be wished. A review of it, however, does not excite despondence. The impost was adopted immediately, and in its utmost latitude, by several of the states. Several, also, which complied partially with it at first, have since complied more liberally. One of them, after long refusal, has complied substantially. Two states only have failed altogether; and, as to one of them, it is not known that its failure has proceeded from a decided opposition to it On the whole, it appears that the necessity and reasonableness of the scheme have been gaining ground among the states. He was aware that one exception ought to be made to this inference; an exception, too, which it peculiarly concerned him to advert to. The state of Virginia, as appears by an act yesterday laid before Congress, has withdrawn its assent once given to the scheme. This circumstance could not but produce some embarrassment in a representative of that stale advocating the scheme—one, too, whose principles were extremely unfavorable to a disregard of the sense of constituents. But it ought not to deter him from listening to considerations which, in the present case, ought to prevail over it One of these considerations was, that, although the delegates who compose Congress more immediately represented, and were amenable to, the states from which they respectively come, yet, in another view, they owed a fidelity to the collective interests of the whole: secondly, although not only the express instructions, but even the declared sense of constituents, as in the present case, were to be a law in general to their representatives, still there were occasions on which the latter ought to hazard personal consequences, from a respect to what his clear conviction determines to be the true interest of the former; and the present he conceived to fall under this exception: lastly, the part he took on the present occasion was the more fully justified to his own mind, by his thorough persuasion that, with the same knowledge of public affairs which his station commanded, the legislature of Virginia would not have repealed the law in favor of the impost, and would even now rescind the appeal.

The result of these observations was, that it was the duty of Congress, under whose authority the public debts had been contracted, to aim at a general revenue, as the only means of discharging them; and that the dictate of justice and gratitude was enforced by a regard to the preservation of the Confederacy, to our reputation abroad, and to our internal tranquillity.

Mr. RUTLEDGE complained that those who so strenuously urged the necessity and competency of a general revenue, operating throughout all the United States at the same time, declined specifying any general objects from which such a revenue could be drawn. He was thought to insinuate that these objects were kept back intentionally, until the general principle could be irrevocably fixed, when Congress would be bound, at all events, to go on with the project; whereupon—

Mr. FITZSIMMONS expressed some concern at the turn which the discussion seemed to be taking. He said, that, unless mutual confidence prevailed, no progress could be made towards the attainment of those ends which all, in some way or other, aimed at It was a mistake to suppose that any specific plan had been preconcerted among the patrons of a general revenue.

Mr. WILSON, with whom the motion originated, gave his assurances that it was neither the effect of preconcert with others, nor of any determinate plan matured by himself; that he had been led into it by the declaration, on Saturday last, by Congress, that substantial funds ought to be provided; by the memorial of the army from