Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/370

  of unequal regulations of commerce, or unequal indirect taxes, as another article had defended us from unequal direct taxes?

I do not hazard much in saying, that the present Constitution had never been adopted without those preliminary guards in it.

ⅭⅭⅬⅩⅥ.

February 6, 1792.

I, sir, have always conceived—I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived, and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe that those who ratified the Constitution conceived—that this is not an indefinite Government, deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers, but a limited Government, tied down to the specified powers which explain and define the general terms.

ⅭⅭⅬⅩⅦ.

April the 6th [1792.]The President called on me before breakfast, and first introduced some other matter, then fell on the representation bill, which he had now in his possession for the tenth day. I had before given him my opinion in writing, that the method of apportionment was contrary to the constitution. He agreed that it was contrary to the common understanding of that instrument, and to what was understood at the time by the makers of it: that yet it would bear the construction which the bill put, and he observed that the vote for and against the bill was perfectly geographical, a northern against a southern vote, and he feared he should be thought to be taking side with a southern party. …

Written this the 9th of April.

ⅭⅭⅬⅩⅧ.

May 26, 1792.

As to the third point, the question of an assumption of the State debts by the United States was in discussion when the convention that framed the present government was sitting at Philadelphia, and in a long conversation which I had with Mr. Madison in an afternoon’s walk, I well remember that we were perfectly agreed in the expediency and propriety of such a measure; though we were both of opinion that it would be more advisable to make it a measure