That the imposition of additional taxes had become indispensable, was a truth too obvious to be controverted with the semblance of reason; but the subjects of taxation afforded at all times an ample field for discussion. The committee of ways and means reported several resolutions for extending the internal duties to various objects which were supposed capable of bearing them, and also proposed an augmentation of the impost on foreign goods imported into the United States, and a direct tax. It was proposed to lay a tax on licenses to sell wines and spirituous liquors, on sales at auction, on pleasure carriages, on snuff manufactured, and on sugar refined in the United States, and also to lay a stamp duty. [Sidenote: Internal taxes laid.] The direct tax was not even supported by the committee. Only thirteen members voted in its favour. The augmentation of the duty on imposts met with no opposition. The internal duties were introduced in separate bills, that each might encounter only those objections which could be made to itself; and that the loss of one might not involve the loss of others. The resolution in favour of stamps was rejected: the others were carried, after repeated and obstinate debates. The members of the opposition were in favour of raising the whole sum required by additional burdens on trade, and by direct taxes. While these measures were depending before congress, memorials and resolutions against them were presented by the manufacturers, which were expressed in terms of disrespect that evidenced the sense in which numbers understood the doctrine, _that the people were sovereign, and those who administered the government, their servants_. This opportunity for charging the government with tyranny and oppression, with partiality and injustice, was too favourable not to be embraced by the democratic societies, those self proclaimed watchful sentinels over the rights of the people. A person unacquainted with those motives which, in the struggle of party, too often influence the conduct of men, would have supposed a direct tax to be not only in itself more eligible, but to be more acceptable to the community than those which were proposed. To the more judicious observers of the springs of human action, the reverse was known to be the fact. [Illustration: George Washington's Bedroom at Mount Vernon