merica, from
a like cause, the government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a
state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt,
that the happiness of the people in both countries would be promoted by
competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues which
the necessities of the public might require?

The present Confederation, feeble as it is intended to repose in the
United States, an unlimited power of providing for the pecuniary wants
of the Union. But proceeding upon an erroneous principle, it has been
done in such a manner as entirely to have frustrated the intention.
Congress, by the articles which compose that compact (as has already
been stated), are authorized to ascertain and call for any sums of money
necessary, in their judgment, to the service of the United States; and
their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of apportionment, are
in every constitutional sense obligatory upon the States. These have no
right to question the propriety of the demand; no discretion beyond
that of devising the ways and means of furnishing the sums demanded.
But though this be strictly and truly the case; though the assumption of
such a right would be an infringement of the articles of Union; though
it may seldom or never have been avowedly claimed, yet in practice it
has been constantly exercised, and would continue to be so, as long
as the revenues of the Confederacy should remain dependent on the
intermediate agency of its members. What the consequences of this system
have been, is within the knowledge of every man the least conversant in
our public affairs, and has been amply unfolded in different parts of
these inquiries. It is this which has chiefly contributed to reduce
us to a situation, which affords ample cause both of mortification to
ourselves, and of triumph to our enemies.

What remedy can there be for this situation, but in a change of the
system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive
system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined
for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national
government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation
authorized in every well-ordered constitution of civil government?
Ingenious men may declaim with plausibility on any subject; but no
human ingenuity can point out any other expedient to rescue us from the
inconveniences and embarrassments naturally