Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/153

 those regulations that inattention or other motives had at first rendered imperfect—

S 8. The power given to Congress to lay taxes contains nothing more than is comprehended in the Spirit of the eigth article of the Confederation. To prevent any Combination of States, Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be equal in all, and if such a Duty is laid on foreign Tonage as to give an advantage in the first instance to the Eastern States, it will operate as a bounty to our own Shipbuilders. If an oppressive Act should be obtained to the prejudice of the Southern States, it will always be subject to be regulated by a Majority, and would be repealed as soon as felt. That at most it could prevail no longer than ’till that Jealousy should be awakened which must have Slept when it passed, and which could never prevail but under a supposed Combination of the President and the two Houses of the Legislature.

S. 9. Convention were anxious to procure a perpetual decree against the Importation of Slaves; but the Southern States could not be brought to consent to it—All that could possibly be obtained was a temporary regulation which the Congress may vary hereafter.

Public Safety may require a supension of the Ha: Corpus in cases of necessity: when those cases do not exist, the virtuous Citizen will ever be protected in his opposition to power, ’till corruption shall have obliterated every sense of Honor & Virtue from a Brave and free People. Convention have also provided against any direct or Capitation Tax but according to an equal proportion among the respective States: This was thought a necessary precaution though it was the idea of every one that government would seldom have recourse to direct Taxation, and that the objects of Commerce would be more than Sufficient to answer the common exigencies of State and should further supplies be necessary, the power of Congress would not be exercised while the respective States would raise those supplies in any other manner more suitable to their own inclinations—That no Duties shall be laid on Exports or Tonage, on Vessells bound from one State to another is the effect of that attention to general Equality that governed the deliberations of Convention. Hence unproductive States cannot draw a revenue from productive States into the Public Treasury, nor unproductive States be hampered in their Manufactures to the emolument of others. When the Public Money is lodged in its Treasury there can be no regulation more consistant with the Spirit of Economy and free Government that it shall only be drawn forth under appropriation by Law and this part of the proposed Constitution could meet with no