tions, the minute details of the
report.

[Footnote 59: See note, No. VI. at the end of the volume.]

Before the question was taken on the bill, a motion was made to limit
its duration, the vote upon which strongly marked the progress of
opinion in the house respecting those systems of finance which were
believed to have established the credit of the United States.

The secretary of the treasury had deemed it indispensable to the
creation of public credit, that the appropriations of funds for the
payment of the interest, and the gradual redemption of the principal
of the national debt, should be not only sufficient, but permanent
also. A party was found in the first congress who opposed this
principle; and were in favour of retaining a full power over the
subject in each branch of the legislature, by making annual
appropriations. The arguments which had failed in congress appear to
have been more successfully employed with the people. Among the
multiplied vices which were ascribed to the funding system, it was
charged with introducing a permanent and extensive mortgage of funds,
which was alleged to strengthen unduly the hands of the executive
magistrate, and to be one of the many evidences which existed, of
monarchical propensities in those who administered the government.

The report lately made by the secretary of the treasury, and the bill
founded on that report, contemplated a permanent increase of the
duties on certain specified articles; and a permanent appropriation of
the revenue arising from them, to the purposes of the national debt.
Thirty-one members were in favour of the motion for limiting the
duration of the bill, and only thirty against it. By the rules of the
house, the speaker has a right first to vote as a member; and, if the
numbers should then be equally divided, to decide as speaker. Being
opposed to the limitation, the motion was lost by his voice.

On the eighth of May, after an active and interesting session,
congress adjourned to the first Monday in November.

The asperity which, on more than one occasion, discovered itself in
debate, was a certain index of the growing exasperation of parties;
and the strength of the opposition on those questions which brought
into review the points on which the administration was to be attacked,
denoted the impression which the specific charges brought against
those who conducted public affairs, had made on the minds of the
people, in an extensive