The answer to the memorials from the legislature of Pennsylvania was agreed to as it stands on the Journal, New Jersey alone dissenting.

In the course of its discussion several expressions were struck out which seemed to reprehend the states for the deficiency of their contributions. In favor of these expressions, it was urged that they were true, and ought to be held forth as the cause of the public difficulties, in justification of Congress. On the other side, it was urged that Congress had, in many respects, been faulty as well as the states—particularly in letting their finances become so disordered before they began to apply any remedy; and that, if this were not the case, it would be more prudent to address to the states a picture of the public distresses and danger than a satire on their faults; since the latter would only irritate them, whereas the former would tend to lead them into the measures supposed by Congress to be essential to the public interest.

The propriety of mentioning to the legislature of Pennsylvania the expedient, into which Congress had been driven, of drawing bills on Spain and Holland without previous warrant, the disappointment attending it, and the deductions ultimately ensuing from the aids destined to the United States by the court of France, was also a subject of discussion. On one side, it was represented as a fica which, being dishonorable to Congress, ought not to be proclaimed by them, and that in the present case it could answer no purpose. On the other side it was contended that it was already known to all the world; that, as a glaring proof of the public embarrassments, it would impress the legislature with the danger of making those separate appropriations which would increase the embarrassments; and particularly would explain, in some degree, the cause of the discontinuance of the French interest due on the loan-office certificates.

Mr. RUTLEDGE, and some other members, having expressed less solicitude about satisfying or soothing the creditors within Pennsylvania, through the legislature, than others thought ought to be felt by every one, Mr. WILSON, adverting to it with some warmth, declared that, if such indifference should prevail he was little anxious what became of the answer to the memorials. Pennsylvania, he was persuaded, would take her own measures without regard to those of Congress, and that she ought to do so. She was willing, he said, to sink or swim according to the common fate, but that she would not suffer herself, with a mill-stone of six millions of the Continental debt about her neck, to go to the bottom alone

[Note *: * He supposed that sum due, by the United States, to citizens of Pennsylvania, for loans.]

Search Site
Search Document Library