fp34.txt

I FLATTER myself it has been clearly shown in my last number that the 
        particular States, under the proposed Constitution, would have COEQUAL 
        authority with the Union in the article of revenue, except as to duties 
        on imports. As this leaves open to the States far the greatest part of 
        the resources of the community, there can be no color for the assertion 
        that they would not possess means as abundant as could be desired for 
        the supply of their own wants, independent of all external control. That 
        the field is sufficiently wide will more fully appear when we come to 
        advert to the inconsiderable share of the public expenses for which it 
        will fall to the lot of the State governments to provide. To argue upon abstract principles that this co-ordinate authority cannot 
        exist, is to set up supposition and theory against fact and reality. However 
        proper such reasonings might be to show that a thing OUGHT NOT TO EXIST, 
        they are wholly to be rejected when they are made use of to prove that 
        it does not exist contrary to the evidence of the fact itself. It is well 
        known that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last 
        resort, resided for ages in two different political bodies not as branches 
        of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, 
        in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; 
        in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove 
        the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having 
        power to ANNUL or REPEAL the acts of the other. But a man would have been 
        regarded as frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their 
        existence. It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA 
        CENTURIATA and the COMITIA TRIBUTA. The former, in which the people voted 
        by centuries, was so arranged as to give a superiority to the patrician 
        interest; in the latter, in which numbers prevailed, the plebian interest 
        had an entire predominancy. And yet these two legislatures coexisted for 
        ages, and the Roman republic attained to the utmost height of human greatness. In the case particularly under consideration, there is no such contradiction 
        as appears in the example cited; there is no power on either side to annul 
        the acts of the other. And in practice there is little reason to apprehend 
        any inconvenience; because, in a short course of time, the wants of the 
        States will naturally reduce themselves within A VERY NARROW COMPASS; 
        and in the interim, the United States will, in all probability, find it 
        convenient to abstain wholly from those objects to which the particular 
        States would be inclined to resort. To form a more precise judgment of the true merits of this question, 
        it will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will 
        require a federal provision in respect to revenue, and those which will 
        require a State provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether 
        unlimited, and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate 
        bounds. In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not 
        to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote 
        futurity. Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon 
        a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these 
        with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried 
        course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than 
        to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national 
        government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought 
        to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; 
        and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely 
        to limit that capacity. It is true, perhaps, that a computation might 
        be made with sufficient accuracy to answer the purpose of the quantity 
        of revenue requisite to discharge the subsisting engagements of the Union, 
        and to maintain those establishments which, for some time to come, would 
        suffice in time of peace. But would it be wise, or would it not rather 
        be the extreme of folly, to stop at this point, and to leave the government 
        intrusted with the care of the national defense in a state of absolute 
        incapacity to provide for the protection of the community against future 
        invasions of the public peace, by foreign war or domestic convulsions? 
        If, on the contrary, we ought to exceed this point, where can we stop, 
        short of an indefinite power of providing for emergencies as they may 
        arise? Though it is easy to assert, in general terms, the possibility 
        of forming a rational judgment of a due provision against probable dangers, 
        yet we may safely challenge those who make the assertion to bring forward 
        their data, and may affirm that they would be found as vague and uncertain 
        as any that could be produced to establish the probable duration of the 
        world. Observations confined to the mere prospects of internal attacks 
        can deserve no weight; though even these will admit of no satisfactory 
        calculation: but if we mean to be a commercial people, it must form a 
        part of our policy to be able one day to defend that commerce. The support 
        of a navy and of naval wars would involve contingencies that must baffle 
        all the efforts of political arithmetic. Admitting that we ought to try the novel and absurd experiment in politics 
        of tying up the hands of government from offensive war founded upon reasons 
        of state, yet certainly we ought not to disable it from guarding the community 
        against the ambition or enmity of other nations. A cloud has been for 
        some time hanging over the European world. If it should break forth into 
        a storm, who can insure us that in its progress a part of its fury would 
        not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would hastily pronounce that we 
        are entirely out of its reach. Or if the combustible materials that now 
        seem to be collecting should be dissipated without coming to maturity, 
        or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us, what security 
        can we have that our tranquillity will long remain undisturbed from some 
        other cause or from some other quarter? Let us recollect that peace or 
        war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious 
        we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish 
        the ambition of others. Who could have imagined at the conclusion of the 
        last war that France and Britain, wearied and exhausted as they both were, 
        would so soon have looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To 
        judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that 
        the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with 
        much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; 
        and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, 
        is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. What are the chief sources of expense in every government? What has occasioned 
        that enormous accumulation of debts with which several of the European 
        nations are oppressed? The answers plainly is, wars and rebellions; the 
        support of those institutions which are necessary to guard the body politic 
        against these two most mortal diseases of society. The expenses arising 
        from those institutions which are relative to the mere domestic police 
        of a state, to the support of its legislative, executive, and judicial 
        departments, with their different appendages, and to the encouragement 
        of agriculture and manufactures (which will comprehend almost all the 
        objects of state expenditure), are insignificant in comparison with those 
        which relate to the national defense. In the kingdom of Great Britain, where all the ostentatious apparatus 
        of monarchy is to be provided for, not above a fifteenth part of the annual 
        income of the nation is appropriated to the class of expenses last mentioned; 
        the other fourteen fifteenths are absorbed in the payment of the interest 
        of debts contracted for carrying on the wars in which that country has 
        been engaged, and in the maintenance of fleets and armies. If, on the 
        one hand, it should be observed that the expenses incurred in the prosecution 
        of the ambitious enterprises and vainglorious pursuits of a monarchy are 
        not a proper standard by which to judge of those which might be necessary 
        in a republic, it ought, on the other hand, to be remarked that there 
        should be as great a disproportion between the profusion and extravagance 
        of a wealthy kingdom in its domestic administration, and the frugality 
        and economy which in that particular become the modest simplicity of republican 
        government. If we balance a proper deduction from one side against that 
        which it is supposed ought to be made from the other, the proportion may 
        still be considered as holding good. But let us advert to the large debt which we have ourselves contracted 
        in a single war, and let us only calculate on a common share of the events 
        which disturb the peace of nations, and we shall instantly perceive, without 
        the aid of any elaborate illustration, that there must always be an immense 
        disproportion between the objects of federal and state expenditures. It 
        is true that several of the States, separately, are encumbered with considerable 
        debts, which are an excrescence of the late war. But this cannot happen 
        again, if the proposed system be adopted; and when these debts are discharged, 
        the only call for revenue of any consequence, which the State governments 
        will continue to experience, will be for the mere support of their respective 
        civil list; to which, if we add all contingencies, the total amount in 
        every State ought to fall considerably short of two hundred thousand pounds. In framing a government for posterity as well as ourselves, we ought, 
        in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate, 
        not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expense. If this principle 
        be a just one our attention would be directed to a provision in favor 
        of the State governments for an annual sum of about two hundred thousand 
        pounds; while the exigencies of the Union could be susceptible of no limits, 
        even in imagination. In this view of the subject, by what logic can it 
        be maintained that the local governments ought to command, in perpetuity, 
        an EXCLUSIVE source of revenue for any sum beyond the extent of two hundred 
        thousand pounds? To extend its power further, in EXCLUSION of the authority 
        of the Union, would be to take the resources of the community out of those 
        hands which stood in need of them for the public welfare, in order to 
        put them into other hands which could have no just or proper occasion 
        for them. Suppose, then, the convention had been inclined to proceed upon the principle 
        of a repartition of the objects of revenue, between the Union and its 
        members, in PROPORTION to their comparative necessities; what particular 
        fund could have been selected for the use of the States, that would not 
        either have been too much or too little too little for their present, 
        too much for their future wants? As to the line of separation between 
        external and internal taxes, this would leave to the States, at a rough 
        computation, the command of two thirds of the resources of the community 
        to defray from a tenth to a twentieth part of its expenses; and to the 
        Union, one third of the resources of the community, to defray from nine 
        tenths to nineteen twentieths of its expenses. If we desert this boundary 
        and content ourselves with leaving to the States an exclusive power of 
        taxing houses and lands, there would still be a great disproportion between 
        the MEANS and the END; the possession of one third of the resources of 
        the community to supply, at most, one tenth of its wants. If any fund 
        could have been selected and appropriated, equal to and not greater than 
        the object, it would have been inadequate to the discharge of the existing 
        debts of the particular States, and would have left them dependent on 
        the Union for a provision for this purpose. The preceding train of observation will justify the position which has 
        been elsewhere laid down, that "A CONCURRENT JURISDICTION in the article 
        of taxation was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, 
        in respect to this branch of power, of State authority to that of the 
        Union." Any separation of the objects of revenue that could have been 
        fallen upon, would have amounted to a sacrifice of the great INTERESTS 
        of the Union to the POWER of the individual States. The convention thought 
        the concurrent jurisdiction preferable to that subordination; and it is 
        evident that it has at least the merit of reconciling an indefinite constitutional 
        power of taxation in the Federal government with an adequate and independent 
        power in the States to provide for their own necessities. There remain 
        a few other lights, in which this important subject of taxation will claim 
        a further consideration.