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.
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