This motion was objected to by Mr. Madison as being premature. The state of the finances, he thought, was not sufficiently understood to authorize the adoption of the measure it contemplated. The debate however soon took a different direction. That part of the resolution which proposed a reference to the secretary of the treasury was particularly opposed; and an ardent discussion ensued, in which, without much essential variation, the arguments which had before been urged on the same subject were again employed. After a vehement contest, the motion to amend the resolution by striking out the proposed reference was overruled, and it was carried in its original form. {1793} In obedience to this order, the secretary made a report, in which he proposed a plan for the annual redemption of that portion of the debt, the payment of which was warranted by the contract between the United States and their creditors. But the expenses of the Indian war rendering it, in his opinion, unsafe to rest absolutely on the existing revenue, he proposed to extend the internal taxes to pleasure horses, or pleasure carriages, as the legislature might deem most eligible. The consideration of this report was deferred on various pretexts; and a motion was made to reduce the military establishment. The debate on this subject was peculiarly earnest; and, in its progress, the mode of conducting the Indian war, the relative merits and expensiveness of militia and of regular troops, and the danger to liberty from standing armies, were elaborately discussed. It was not until the fourth of January that the motion was rejected. While that question remained undecided, the report of the secretary was unavoidably postponed, because, on its determination would depend, in the opinion of many, the necessity of additional taxes. It would seem not improbable that the opponents of the American system of finances, who constituted rather a minority of the present congress, but who indulged sanguine hopes of becoming the majority in the next, were desirous of referring every question relating to the treasury department to the succeeding legislature, in which there would be a more full representation of the people. Whatever might be the operating motives for delay, neither the extension of the law imposing a duty on spirits distilled within the United States to the territory north-west of the river Ohio, nor the plan for redeeming the public debt, which was earnestly pressed by the administration, could be carried through the present congress. Those who claimed the favour and confidence of the people as a just reward for their general attachment to liberty, and especially for their watchfulness to prevent every augmentation of debt, were found in opposition to a system for its diminution, which was urged by men who were incessantly charged with entertaining designs for its excessive accumulation, in order to render it the corrupt instrument of executive influence. It might be