written; as the two following are of the earlier debates on the Cofederation, which I took in like manner.[1]
On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and, on the 22nd, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the 30th and 31st of that month, and 1st of the ensuing, those articles were debated with each state should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original draught in these words. ‘Art. XI. All charges of war and all other expences that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex and quality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each colony, a true account of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States.’
Mr. Chase moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the ‘white inhabitants.’ He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property, that this was, in theory, the true rule; but that, from a variety of difficulties, it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every state, could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the state must therefore be devised, some standard referred to, which would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode which we could adopt, with one exception only: he observed that negroes are property, and as such, cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those states where there are few slaves; that the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c., whereas a Southern family lays out the same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern states on the farmer’s head and on his slave’s head, than the Northern ones on their farmer’s heads and the heads of their cattle: that the
- ↑ [The above note of the author is on a slip of paper, pasted in at the end of the Declaration. Here is also sewed into the MS. a slip of newspaper containing, under the head ‘Declaration of Independence,’ a letter from Thomas McKean to Messrs. William McCorkle & Son, dated ‘Philadelphia, June 16, 1817.’ This letter is to be found in the Port Folio, Sept. 1817, p. 249.]
