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 ratio of _eight_ to _seven_, in addition to expenses and other incidental losses. This assertion is not the less true because it may not at first be palpable. Their receipts will be in large sums, but their payments in small ones. The _governments_ of the States will receive _seven_ dollars, for which the _people_ of the States will pay _eight_. The large sums received will be palpable to the senses; the small sums paid it requires thought to identify. But a little consideration will satisfy the people that the effect is the same as if _seven hundred dollars_ were given them from the public Treasury, for which they were at the same time required to pay in taxes, direct or indirect, _eight hundred_.