of the succeeding year, be liable for the
first instalment of the principal; and the humiliating circumstance
was to be encountered of a total failure to comply with the most
solemn engagements, unaccompanied with the prospect of being enabled
to give assurances, that, at any future time, their situation would be
more eligible. If the condition of the domestic creditors was not
absolutely desperate, the prospect of obtaining satisfaction for their
claims was so distant and uncertain, that their evidences of debt were
transferred at an eighth, and even at a tenth of their nominal value.
The distress consequent on this depreciation was great and afflicting.
"The requisitions of congress for eight years past," say the committee
in February, 1786, to whom the subject of the revenue had been
referred, "have been so irregular in their operation, so uncertain in
their collection, and so evidently unproductive, that a reliance on
them in future as a source from whence moneys are to be drawn to
discharge the engagements of the confederacy, definite as they are in
time and amount, would be not less dishonourable to the understandings
of those who entertain such confidence, than it would be dangerous to
the welfare and peace of the union." Under public embarrassments which
were daily increasing, it had become, it was said, "the duty of
congress to declare most explicitly that the crisis _had_ arrived,
when the people of the United States, by whose will, and for whose
benefit, the federal government was instituted, must decide whether
they will support their rank as a nation, by maintaining the public
faith at home and abroad, or whether, for want of a timely exertion in
establishing a general revenue, and thereby giving strength to the
confederacy, they will hazard not only the existence of the union, but
of those great and invaluable privileges for which they have so
arduously and so honourably contended."

The revenue system of the 18th of April, 1783, was again solemnly
recommended to the consideration of the several states, and their
unanimous and early accession to it was declared to be the only
measure which could enable congress to preserve the public faith, and
to avoid the fatal evils which will inevitably flow from "a violation
of those principles of justice which are the only solid basis of the
honour and prosperity of nations."

In framing this system, a revenue adequate to the funding of the whole
national debt had