oking to its Treasury as the source of all their
emoluments, the State officers, under whatever names they might pass and
by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be
the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.

I am quite sure that the intelligent people of our several States will
be satisfied on a little reflection that it is neither wise nor safe to
release the members of their local legislatures from the responsibility
of levying the taxes necessary to support their State governments and
vest it in Congress, over most of whose members they have no control.
They will not think it expedient that Congress shall be the taxgatherer
and paymaster of all their State governments, thus amalgamating all
their officers into one mass of common interest and common feeling.
It is too obvious that such a course would subvert our well-balanced
system of government, and ultimately deprive us of all the blessings
now derived from our happy Union.

However willing I might be that any unavoidable surplus in the
Treasury should be returned to the people through their State
governments, I can not assent to the principle that a surplus may be
created for the purpose of distribution. Viewing this bill as in effect
assuming the right not only to create a surplus for that purpose, but to
divide the contents of the Treasury among the States without limitation,
from whatever source they may be derived, and asserting the power to
raise and appropriate money for the support of every State government
and institution, as well as for making every local improvement, however
trivial, I can not give it my assent.

It is difficult to perceive what advantages would accrue to the old
States or the new from the system of distribution which this bill
proposes if it were otherwise unobjectionable. It requires no argument
to prove that if $3,000,000 a year, or any other sum, shall be taken out
of the Treasury by this bill for distribution it must be replaced by the
same sum collected from the people through some other means. The old
States will receive annually a sum of money from the Treasury, but they
will pay in a larger sum, together with the expenses of collection and
distribution. It is only their proportion of _seven-eighths_ of the
proceeds of land sales which they are _to receive_, but they must _pay_
their due proportion of the _whole_. Disguise it as we may, the bill
proposes to them a dead loss in the