“If our merchants are innocent,” he said, “they are welcome to their good fortune; if guilty, I scorn to participate in its profits. I will never consent to make our penal code the basis of our Ways and Means, or to establish a partnership between the Treasury and the violators of the Non-importation Law.” William Lowndes fortified his position by an argument showing that “if the plan of confiscation and of a rigid execution of the law were dismissed, no just principles of policy and not even the interests of the Treasury could sanction an exaction which would resolve itself into a tax.” Josiah Quincy found himself for once in accord with his chief opponents, and declared that in his opinion highway robbery stood a little higher in point of courage, and was a little less in point of iniquity, than this Treasury attempt to make calumny the basis of plunder. Felix Grundy said: “Gentlemen have assumed a strange, high-minded position in this argument, the force of which, I confess, is beyond my comprehension.” December 11 the House in Committee of the Whole, by a vote of fifty-two to forty-nine, rejected Gallatin’s suggestion. December 15 a bill came from the Senate remitting all forfeitures on goods owned by Americans and shipped from England before September 15, when the declaration of war became known there. After a sharp debate this bill passed by a vote of sixty-four to sixty-one,--Calhoun, Cheves, and Lowndes voting with the Federalists and securing its passage. This decision closed one source of revenue for the year. The course taken by Cheves, Calhoun, and Lowndes was largely due to their dislike of the non-importation system on which the proposed forfeiture rested. They wished to abolish commercial restrictions; they were anxious to avoid internal taxation, and to supply the Treasury with revenue by admitting British goods under heavy duties. So earnest was Cheves in pursuit of this object that he hardly tolerated any other, and made no secret of his hope that the failure to exact these forfeitures and to lay internal taxes would compel Congress to depend upon imports for resources. “How are the exigencies of the government for the next year to be supplied?” he asked as early as December 4. “Is the deficiency to be derived from [internal] taxes? No! I will tell gentlemen who are opposed to them, for their comfort, that there will be no taxes imposed for the next year. It was said last session that you would have time to lay them for this session, but I then said it was a mistake. You now find this to be the fact. By your indecision then, when the country was convinced they were necessary, you have set the minds of the people against taxes; but were it otherwise, you have not time now to lay them for next year.” Calhoun also laid down emphatic principles on this point, dwelling in strong language on what he held to be the radical error of Virginia statesmanship.