The Same Subject Continued (Concerning the General Power of Taxation)
Hamilton: From The Independent Journal , Saturday, January 5, 1788.
To the People of the State of New York:
I flatter myself it has been clearly shown in my last number that the particular states, under the proposed Constitution, would have coequal authority with the Union in the article of revenue, except as to duties on imports. As this leaves open to the states far the greatest part of the resources of the community, there can be no color for the assertion that they would not possess means as abundant as could be desired for the supply of their own wants, independent of all external control. That the field is sufficiently wide will more fully appear when we come to advert to the inconsiderable share of the public expenses for which it will fall to the lot of the state governments to provide.
To argue upon abstract principles that this coordinate authority cannot exist, is to set up supposition and theory against fact and reality. However proper such reasonings might be to show that a thing ought not to exist , they are wholly to be rejected when they are made use of to prove that it does not exist contrary to the evidence of the fact itself. It is well known that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two different political bodies—not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to annul or repeal the acts of the other.