Essays on the Constitution of the United States: Published during its Discussion by the People, 1787-1788
History
Essays on the Constitution of the United States: Published during its Discussion by the People, 1787-1788
Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; United States. Constitution
Much clamour has been made about the power of the president; it has been
asserted that his influence would be such as to enable him to continue in
office during life.
Such insinuations are founded on a very slender basis. If the president
opposes the sense of both houses, without sufficient reasons for his
conduct, he will soon become obnoxious, and his influence vanish like the
fleeting smoke; and his objection to anything which the house and senate
may think calculated for the promotion of the publick good, will be of no
effect.
Sect. 8 provides, That Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes,
duties, imposts, excises, &c.—to pay debts, to provide for the common
defence and general welfare of the United States—that all duties, imposts
and excises shall be uniform throughout the Union—they shall have power to
coin money, and to fix the value thereof, &c.—The impotency of the present
Congress sufficiently indicates the necessity of granting greater powers
to a federal head; and it is highly requisite such a head should be
enabled to establish a fund adequate to the exigencies of the Union.
The propriety of all duties and imposts being uniform throughout the
states, cannot be disputed. It is also highly requisite that Congress
should be enabled to establish a coin which shall circulate the same
throughout all the states. The necessity of such arrangements is certainly
very obvious. For other particulars contained in the 8th section, I must
refer my readers to the Constitution, and am confident they will find it
replete with nothing more than what is absolutely necessary should be
vested in the guardians of a free country.
Can, then, those murmuring sycophants, who oppose the plan of federal
government, wish for anything more liberal than what is contained in the
aforementioned section? If the powers of a federal head were to be
established on as weak a frame as that on which the present confederation
is founded, what effect would any constitution have in giving energy to
measures designed to promote the glory of the Union, and for establishing
its honour and credit? One great object of the federal Convention was, to
give more power to future Assemblies of the States. In this they have done
liberally, without partiallity to the interests of the states
individually; and their intentions were known before the honourable body
was dissolved. And now that a form of government, every way adequate to
the purposes of the Union, has been proposed by them, in which proper
powers are to be vested in the supreme head, a hue and cry is raised by
the sons of sedition and dishonesty, as though an army of uncircumcised
Philistines were upon us!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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