In the course of the debate, severe allusions were made to the conduct
of particular states; and the opinions advanced in favour of the
measure, were ascribed to local interests.

In support of the assumption, the debts of the states were traced to
their origin. America, it was said, had engaged in a war, the object
of which was equally interesting to every part of the union. It was
not the war of a particular state, but of the United States. It was
not the liberty and independence of a part, but of the whole, for
which they had contended, and which they had acquired. The cause was a
common cause. As brethren, the American people had consented to hazard
property and life in its defence. All the sums expended in the
attainment of this great object, whatever might be the authority under
which they were raised or appropriated, conduced to the same end.
Troops were raised, and military stores purchased, before congress
assumed the command of the army, or the control of the war. The
ammunition which repulsed the enemy at Bunker's Hill, was purchased by
Massachusetts; and formed a part of the debt of that state.

Nothing could be more erroneous than the principle which had been
assumed in argument, that the holders of securities issued by
individual states were to be considered merely as state creditors;--as
if the debt had been contracted on account of the particular state. It
was contracted on account of the union, in that common cause in which
all were equally interested.

From the complex nature of the political system which had been adopted
in America, the war was, in a great measure, carried on through the
agency of the state governments; and the debts were, in truth, the
debts of the union, for which the states had made themselves
responsible. Except the civil list, the whole state expenditure was in
the prosecution of the war; and the state taxes had undeniably
exceeded the provision for their civil list. The foundation for the
several classes of the debt was reviewed in detail; and it was
affirmed to be proved from the review, and from the books in the
public offices, that, in its origin, a great part of it, even in form,
and the whole, in fact, was equitably due from the continent. The
states individually possessing all the resources of the nation, became
responsible to certain descriptions of the public creditors. But they
were the agents of the continent in contracting the debt; and its
distribution among them