I am told that the principal objection to a land tax is the inequality. To obviate this objection (although I cannot accede to the force of it) perhaps a reduction of the sum from one dollar to a quarter of a dollar per hundred acres might be expedient; and to supply the deficiency, a tax on houses might be adopted, according to the enclosed rate, which I also beg leave to submit. I must take the liberty to declare my most serious apprehensions from the existence of unsettled accounts among the States. Everything which tends to create or continue them is fraught with ruinous consequences. Keeping accounts of moneys paid by taxes of the States, and liquidating those accounts by after settlements, will, I fear, prove the source of much dissension. It will operate as heretofore in preventing the States from paying anything. I would pray therefore to submit to Congress the following mode of terminating all present accounts, viz. that the whole sum paid or expended by each State, for the public service from the commencement of the war, should be placed to the credit of the particular State, and each draw interest on such sum. By these means the whole account would be equitably settled in the first instance. The States which are indebted on their own private account, would be able to wipe off such debts by an assignment of national stock. And on the first requisitions made by Congress for current expenditures, each might make payment either in part, or perhaps in the whole, by a discharge of so much of the debt. Thus a degree of simplicity would be introduced into our affairs, and we might avoid the horrors of intestine convulsions. I have the honor to be, &c. ROBERT MORRIS. * * * * * GEORGE WASHINGTON TO ROBERT MORRIS. Head Quarters, March 8th, 1783. Sir, Very painful sensations are excited in my mind by your letter of the 27th of February. It is impossible for me to express to you the regret with which I received the information it contains. I have often reflected with much solicitude upon the disagreeableness of your situation, and the negligence of the several States in not enabling you to do that justice to the public creditors, which their demands require. I wish the step you have taken may sound the claim to their inmost souls, and rouse them to a just sense of their own interest, honor and credit. But I must confess to you that I have my fears, for as danger becomes further removed from them, their feelings seem to be more callous to those noble sentiments, with which I could wish to see them inspired. Mutual jealousies, local prejudices and misapprehensions, have taken such deep root as will not easily be removed.