If the measure was recommended by considerations which rendered its ultimate adoption inevitable, the present was clearly preferable to any future time. It was desirable immediately to quiet the minds of the public creditors by assuring them that justice would be done; to simplify the forms of public debt; and to put an end to that speculation which had been so much reprobated, and which could be terminated only by giving the debt a real and permanent value. That the assumption would impair the just influence of the states was controverted with great strength of argument. The diffusive representation in the state legislatures, the intimate connexion between the representative and his constituents, the influence of the state legislatures over the members of one branch of the national legislature, the nature of the powers exercised by the state governments which perpetually presented them to the people in a point of view calculated to lay hold of the public affections, were guarantees that the states would retain their due weight in the political system, and that a debt was not necessary to the solidity or duration of their power. But the argument it was said proved too much. If a debt was now essential to the preservation of state authority, it would always be so. It must therefore never be extinguished, but must be perpetuated, in order to secure the existence of the state governments. If, for this purpose, it was indispensable that the expenses of the revolutionary war should be borne by the states, it would not be less indispensable that the expenses of future wars should be borne in the same manner. Either the argument was unfounded, or the constitution was wrong; and the powers of the sword and the purse ought not to have been conferred on the government of the union. Whatever speculative opinions might be entertained on this point, they were to administer the government according to the principles of the constitution as it was framed. But, it was added, if so much power follows the assumption as the objection implies, is it not time to ask--is it safe to forbear assuming? if the power is so dangerous, it will be so when exercised by the states. If assuming tends to consolidation, is the reverse, tending to disunion, a less weighty objection? if it is answered that the non-assumption will not necessarily tend to disunion; neither, it may be replied, does the assumption necessarily tend to consolidation. It was not admitted that the assumption would tend to perpetuate the debt. It could not be presumed that the general government would be less willing than the local governments to discharge it; nor could it be presumed that the means were less attainable by the former than the latter.