[Footnote 27: On a subsequent occasion, an attempt was made to obtain a resolution of congress, recommending as an additional amendment to the eighth article of the confederation, that the taxes for the use of the continent should be laid and levied separate from any other tax, and should be paid directly into the national treasury; and that the collectors respectively should be liable to an execution to be issued by the treasurer, or his deputy, under the direction of congress, for any arrears of taxes by him to be collected, which should not be paid into the treasury in conformity with the requisitions of congress. Such was the prevalence of state policy, even in the government of the union, or such the conviction of the inutility of recommending such an amendment, that a vote of congress could not be obtained for asking this salutary regulation as a security for the revenue only for eight years.] To the application which congress had made during the war for power to levy an impost of five per cent on imported and prize goods, one state had never assented, and another had withdrawn the assent it had previously given. It was impossible to yield to some of the objections which had been made to this measure, because they went to the certain destruction of the system itself; but in points where the alterations demanded, though mischievous, were not fatal to the plan, it was thought adviseable to accommodate the recommendations of the government to the prejudices which had been disclosed. It had been insisted that the power of appointing persons to collect the duties, would enable congress to introduce into a state, officers unknown and unaccountable to the government thereof; and that a power to collect an indefinite sum for an indefinite time, for the expenditure of which that body could not be accountable to the states, would render it independent of its constituents, and would be dangerous to liberty. To obviate these objections, the proposition now made was so modified, that the grant was to be limited to twenty-five years; was to be strictly appropriated to the debt contracted on account of the war; and was to be collected by persons to be appointed by the respective states. After a debate, which the tedious mode of conducting business protracted for several weeks, the report was adopted; and a committee, consisting of Mr. Madison, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Ellsworth, was appointed to prepare an address, which should accompany the recommendation to the several states.