It was alleged that the public debt was too great to be paid before other causes of adding to it would occur. This accumulation of debt had been artificially produced by the assumption of what was due from the states. Its immediate effect was to deprive the government of its power over those easy sources of revenue, which, applied to its ordinary necessities and exigencies, would have answered them habitually, and thereby have avoided those burdens on the people which occasioned such murmurs against taxes, and tax gatherers. As a consequence of it, although the calls for money had not been greater than must be expected for the same or equivalent exigencies, yet congress had been already obliged, not only to strain the impost until it produced clamour, and would produce evasion, and war on their own citizens to collect it, but even to resort to an _excise_ law, of odious character with the people, partial in its operation, unproductive unless enforced by arbitrary and vexatious means, and committing the authority of the government in parts where resistance was most probable, and coercion least practicable. That the United States, if left free to act at their discretion, might borrow at two-thirds of the interest contracted to be paid to the public creditors, and thus discharge themselves from the principal in two-thirds of the time: but from this they were precluded by the irredeemable quality of the debt; a quality given for the avowed purpose of inviting its transfer to foreign countries. This transfer of the principal when completed would occasion an exportation of three millions of dollars annually for the interest, a drain of coin without example, and of the consequences of which no calculation could be made.