By the injured and neglected creditor, such an arrangement might
justly be considered as a disreputable artifice.

Instead of delaying, it was believed to be a measure which would
facilitate the settlement of accounts between the states. Its
advocates declared that they did not entertain, and never had
entertained any wish to procrastinate a settlement. On the contrary,
it was greatly desired by them. They had themselves brought forward
propositions for that purpose; and they invited their adversaries to
assist in improving the plan which had been introduced.

The settlement between the states, it was said, either would or would
not be made. Should it ever take place, it would remedy any
inequalities which might grow out of the assumption. Should it never
take place, the justice of the measure became the more apparent. That
the burdens in support of a common war, which from various causes had
devolved unequally on the states, ought to be apportioned among them,
was a truth too clear to be controverted; and this, if the settlement
should never be accomplished, could be effected only by the measure
now proposed. Indeed, in any event, it would be the only certain, as
well as only eligible plan. For how were the debtor states to be
compelled to pay the balances which should be found against them?

If the measure was recommended by considerations which rendered its
ultimate adoption inevitable, the present was clearly preferable to
any future time. It was desirable immediately to quiet the minds of
the public creditors by assuring them that justice would be done; to
simplify the forms of public debt; and to put an end to that
speculation which had been so much reprobated, and which could be
terminated only by giving the debt a real and permanent value.

That the assumption would impair the just influence of the states was
controverted with great strength of argument. The diffusive
representation in the state legislatures, the intimate connexion
between the representative and his constituents, the influence of the
state legislatures over the members of one branch of the national
legislature, the nature of the powers exercised by the state
governments which perpetually presented them to the people in a point
of view calculated to lay hold of the public affections, were
guarantees that the states would retain their due weight in the
political system, and that a debt was not necessary to the solidity or
duration of their p