Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v5.djvu/82

56 states in disobeying acts warranted by it, but some previous abuse and infraction on the part of Congress; that as a proof that the power of fixing the quantum, and making requisitions of money, was considered as a legislative power over the purse, he would appeal to the proposition, made by the British minister, of giving this power to the British Parliament, and leaving to the American assemblies the privilege of complying in their own mode, and to the reasonings of Congress and the several states on that proposition. He observed, further, that by the Articles of Confederation was delegated to Congress a right to borrow money indefinitely, and emit bills of credit, which was a species of borrowing, for repayment and redemption of which the faith of the states was pledged, and their legislatures constitutionally bound. He asked whether these powers were reconcilable with the idea that Congress was a body merely executive. He asked what would be thought in Great Britain, from whose constitution our political reasonings were so much drawn, of an attempt to prove that a power of making requisitions of money on the Parliament, and of borrowing money, for discharge of which the Parliament should be bound, might be annexed to the crown without changing its quality of an executive branch, and that the leaving to the Parliament the mode only of complying with the requisitions of the crown would be leaving to it its supreme and exclusive power of legislation.

As to the second point, he referred again to the British constitution, and the mode in which provision was made for the public debts; observing that, although the executive had no authority to contract a debt, yet, that when a debt had been authorized or admitted by the Parliament, a permanent and irrevocable revenue was granted by the legislature, to be collected and dispensed by the executive; and that fills practice had never been deemed a subversion of the constitution, or a dangerous association of a power over the purse with the power of the sword.

If these observations were just, as he conceived them to be, the establishment of a permanent revenue—not by any assumed authority of Congress, but by the authority of the states at the recommendation of Congress, to be collected and applied by the latter to the discharge of the public debts—could not be deemed inconsistent with the spirit of the Federal Constitution, or subversive of the principles of liberty; and that all objections drawn from such a supposition ought to be withdrawn. Whether other objections of sufficient weight might not lie against such an establishment, was another question. For his part, although for various reasons he had wished for such a plan as most eligible, he had never been sanguine that it was practicable; and the discussions which had taken place had finally satisfied him, that it would be necessary to limit the call for a general revenue to duties on commerce, and to call for the deficiency in the most permanent way that could be reconciled with a revenue established within each state, separately, and appropriated to the common treasury. He said, the rule which he had laid down to himself, in this business, was to concur in every arrangement that should appear necessary for an honorable and just fulfilment of the public engagements, and in no measure tending to augment the power of Congress, which should appear to be unnecessary; and particularly disclaimed the idea of perpetuating a public debt.

Mr. LEE, in answer to Mr. Madison, said the doctrine maintained by him was pregnant with dangerous consequences to the liberties of the confederated states; that, notwithstanding the specious arguments that had been employed, it was an