Antifederalist Nos. 30-31 A Virginia Antifederalist on the Issue of Taxation |
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. . . . It has been the language, since the peace, of the most virtuous and discerning
men in America, that the powers vested in Congress were inadequate to the procuring of the
benefits that should result from the union. It was found that our national character was
sinking in the opinion of foreign nations, and that the selfish views of some of the
states were likely to become the source of dangerous jealousy. The requisitions of
Congress were set at naught; the government, that represented the union, had not a
shilling in its treasury to enable it to pay off the federal debts, nor had it any method
within its power to alter its situation. It could make treaties of commerce, but could not
enforce the observance of them; and it was felt that we were suffering from the
restrictions of foreign nations, who seeing the want of energy in our federal
constitution, and the unlikelihood of cooperation in thirteen separate legislatures, had
shackled our commerce, without any dread of recrimination on our part. To obviate these
grievances, it was I believe the general opinion, that new powers should be vested in
Congress to enable it, in the amplest manner, to regulate the commerce, to lay and collect
duties on the imports of the United States. Delegates were appointed by most of them, for
those purposes, to a convention to be held at Annapolis in the September before last. A
few of them met, and without waiting for the others, who were coming on, they dissolved
the convention -- after resolving among themselves, that the powers vested in them were
not sufficiently extensive; and that they would apply to the legislatures of the several
states, which they represented, to appoint members to another convention, with powers to
new model the federal constitution. This, indeed, it has now done in the most unequivocal
manner; nor has it stopped here, for it has fairly annihilated the constitution of each
individual state. It has proposed to you a high prerogative government, which, like
Aaron's serpent, is to swallow up the rest. This is what the thinking people in America
were apprehensive of. They knew how difficult it is to hit the golden mean, how natural
the transition is from one extreme to another -- from anarchy to tyranny, from the
inconvenient laxity of thirteen separate governments to the too sharp and grinding one,
before which our sovereignty, as a state, was to vanish.
In Art. I, Sect. 8, of the proposed constitution, it is said, "Congress shall have
power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises." Are you then,
Virginians, about to abandon your country to the depredations of excisemen, and the
pressure of excise laws? Did it ever enter the mind of any one of you, that you could live
to see the day, that any other government but the General Assembly of Virginia should have
power of direct taxation in this state? How few of you ever expected to see excise laws,
those instruments of tyranny, in force in your country? But who could imagine, that any
man but a Virginian, were they found to be necessary, would ever have a voice towards
enacting them? That any tribunal, but the courts of Virginia, would be allowed to take
cognizance of disputes between her citizens and their tax gatherers and excisemen? And
that, if ever it should be found necessary to curse this land with these hateful
excisemen, any one, but a fellow citizen, should be entrusted with that office?
For my part, I cannot discover the necessity there was of allowing Congress to subject us
to excise laws, unless -- that considering the extensiveness of the single republic into
which this constitution would collect all the others, and the well known difficulty of
governing large republics with harmony and ease -- it was thought expedient to bit our
mouths with massive curbs, to break us, bridled with excise laws and managed by excisemen,
into an uniform, sober pace, and thus, gradually, tame the troublesome mettle of freemen.
This necessity could not, surely, arise from the desire of furnishing Congress with a
sufficient revenue to enable it to exercise the prerogatives which every friend to America
would wish to see vested in it. As it would, by unanimous consent, have the management of
the impost, it could increase it to any amount, and this would fall sufficiently uniform
on every one, according to his ability. Or, were this not found sufficient, could not the
deficiency be made up by requisitions to the states? Could it not have been made an
article of the federal constitution, that, if any of them refused their quota, Congress
may be allowed to make it up by an increase of the impost on that particular state so
refusing? This would, surely, be a sufficient security to Congress, that their
requisitions would be punctually complied with.
In any dispute between you and the revenue officers and excisemen of Congress, it is true
that it is provided the trial shall be in the first instance within the state, though
before a federal tribunal. It is said in par. 3, sect. 2, art. 3, "The trial of all
crimes except in cases of impeachments shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in
the state where the crime shall be committed." But what does this avail, when an
appeal will lie against you to the supreme federal court. In the paragraph preceding the
one just now quoted, it is said, "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public
ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court
shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme
Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and
under such regulations as the Congress shall make." But where is this Supreme Court
to sit? Will it not be where Congress shall fix its residence? Thither then you will be
carried for trial. Who are to be your jury? Is there any provision made that you shall
have a Venire from your county, or even from your state, as they please to call it? Not
You are to be tried within the territory of Congress, and Congress itself is to be a
party. You are to be deprived of the benefit of a jury from your vicinage, that boast and
birthright of a freeman.
Should it not at least have been provided, that those revenue officers and excisemen --
against whom free governments have always justly entertained a jealousy -- should be
citizens of the state? Was it inadmissible that they should be endued with the bowels of
fellow citizens? Are we not to expect that New England will now send us revenue officers
instead of onions and apples? When you observe that the few places already under Congress
in this state are in the hands of strangers, you will own that my suspicion is not without
some foundation. And if the first cause of it be required, those who have served in
Congress can tell you that the New England delegates to that assembly have always stood by
each other, and have formed a firm phalanx, which the southern delegates have not; that,
on the contrary, the maneuvers of the former have been commonly engaged, with success, in
dividing the latter against each other.
CATO UTICENSIS
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