ch should
remain in the treasury after paying the interest of the proposed
loans: but as the funds immediately to be provided, were calculated to
produce only four per cent, on the entire debt, the dividend, for the
present, was not to exceed that rate of interest.

To enable the treasury to support this increased demand upon it, an
augmentation of the duties on imported wines, spirits, tea, and
coffee, was proposed, and a duty on home made spirits was also
recommended.

This celebrated report, which has been alike the fruitful theme of
extravagant praise and bitter censure, merits the more attention,
because the first regular and systematic opposition to the principles
on which the affairs of the union were administered, originated in the
measures which were founded on it.

On the 28th of January, this subject was taken up; and, after some
animadversions on the speculations in the public debt to which the
report, it was said, had already given birth, the business was
postponed until the eighth of February, when it was again brought
forward.

[Sidenote: Debate thereon.]

Several resolutions affirmative of the principles contained in the
report, were moved by Mr. Fitzsimmons. To the first, which respected a
provision for the foreign debt, the house agreed without a dissenting
voice. The second, in favour of appropriating permanent funds for
payment of the interest on the domestic debt, and for the gradual
redemption of the principal, gave rise to a very animated debate.

Mr. Jackson declared his hostility to funding systems generally. To
prove their pernicious influence, he appealed to the histories of
Florence, Genoa, and Great Britain; and, contending that the subject
ought to be deferred until North Carolina should be represented,
moved, that the committee should rise. This question being decided in
the negative, Mr. Scott declared the opinion that the United States
were not bound to pay the domestic creditors the sums specified in the
certificates of debts in their possession. He supported this opinion
by urging, not that the public had received less value than was
expressed on the face of the paper which had been issued, but that
those to whom it had been delivered, by parting with it at two
shillings and sixpence in the pound, had themselves fixed the value of
their claims, and had manifested their willingness to add to their
other sacrifices this deduction from their demand upon the nation. He
therefore m