The assumption of state debts was the subject of a debate in committee of the whole which lasted from the twenty-third of February to the second of March. New factional lines now revealed a supposed diversity of interest of the several States. The false notions of finance then current were illustrated by an argument that was in continual use, either on the floor or in the lobby. Members would figure how much their States would have to pay as their share of the debt that would be assumed, and on that basis would reach conclusions as to how their States stood to win or lose by the transaction. By this reckoning, of course, the great gainer would appear to be the State upon whom the chances of war had piled the largest debt. This calculation made Burke of South Carolina, usually an opponent of anything coming from Hamilton, a strong advocate of assumption. He told the House that "if the present question was lost, he was almost certain it would end in her bankruptcy, for she [South Carolina] was no more able to grapple with her enormous debt than a boy of twelve years of age is able to grapple with a giant." Livermore, representing a State never within the actual field of military operations, at once replied: "I conceive that the debt of South Carolina, or Massachusetts, or of an individual, has nothing to do with our deliberations. If they have involved themselves in debt, it is their misfortune, and they must extricate themselves as well as they can." On a later occasion Stone of Maryland, another State that lay outside the track of war, gave the leading war-debt States an admonition of the kind that adds insult to injury, saying "however inconvenient it may be to Massachusetts or South Carolina to make a bold exertion, and nobly bear the burthens of their present debt, I believe in the end it would be found to conduce greatly to their advantage." Burke made a crushing rejoinder. "Was Maryland like South Carolina constantly grappling with the enemy during the whole war? There is not a road in the State but has witnessed the ravages of war; plantations were destroyed, and the skeletons of houses, to this day, point out to the traveler the route of the British army; her citizens were exposed to every violence, their capital taken, and their country almost overrun by the enemy; men, women, and children murdered by the Indians and Tories; all the personal property consumed, and now is it to be wondered at that she is not able to make exertions equal with other States, who have been generally in an undisturbed condition?"