The Economic Policies of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton Alexander
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The amount of this debt, with the arrears of interest to the end of the year 1791, is $220,646.81.
4. The act making provision for the debt of the United States has appropriated the proceeds of the western lands, as a fund for the discharge of the public debt. And the act making provision for the reduction of the public debt has appropriated all the surplus of the duties on imports and tonnage, to the end of the year 1790, to the purpose of purchasing the debt at the market price, and has authorized the President to borrow the further sum of two millions of dollars for the same object.
These measures serve to indicate the intention of the Legislature, as early and as fast as possible, to provide for the extinguishment of the existing debt.
In pursuance of that intention, it appears advisable that a systematic plan should be begun for the creation and establishment of a sinking fund.
An obvious basis of this establishment, which may be immediately contemplated, is the amount of the interest on as much of the debt as has been, or shall be, from time to time, purchased, or paid off, or received in discharge of any debt or demand of the United States, made payable in public securities, over and above the interest of any new debt, which may be created, in order to such purchase or payment.
The purchases of the debt, already made, have left a sum of interest in the treasury, which will be increased by future purchases; certain sums payable to the United States, in their own securities, will, when received, have a similar effect. And there is ground to calculate on a saving upon the operations, which are in execution with regard to the foreign debt. The sale of the western lands, when provision shall be made for it, may be expected to produce a material addition to such a fund.
It is therefore submitted, that it be adopted as a principle, that all interest which shall have ceased to be payable by any of the means above specified, shall be set apart and appropriated in the most firm and inviolable manner as a fund for sinking the public debt, by purchase or payment; and that the said fund be placed under the direction of the officers named in the second section of the act making provision for the reduction of the public debt, to be by them applied toward the purchase of the said debt, until the annual produce of the said fund shall amount to two per cent. of the entire portion of the debt which bears a present interest of six per centum, and thenceforth to be applied towards the redemption of that portion of the debt, according to the right which has been reserved to the Government. It will deserve the consideration of the Legislature, whether this fund ought not to be so vested, as to acquire the nature and quality of a proprietary trust, incapable of being diverted without a violation of the principles and sanctions of property.
A rapid accumulation of this fund would arise from its own operation; but it is not doubted, that the progressive development of the resources of the country, and a reduction of the rate of interest, by the progress of public credit, already exemplified in a considerable degree, will speedily enable the Government to make important additions to it in various ways. With due attention to preserve order and cultivate peace, a strong expectation may be indulged that a reduction of the debt of the country will keep pace with the reasonable hopes of its citizens.
All of which is humbly submitted.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON,
Secretary of the Treasury.
[Schedules A, B, C, D, State Papers, Finance, vol. i., pp. 149, 150, 151.]
SPIRITS, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC
Communicated to the House of Representatives, March 6, 1792.
Treasury Department, March 5, 1792.
In obedience to the orders of the House of Representatives of the first and second days of November last, the first directing the Secretary of the Treasury to report to the House such information as he may have obtained, respecting any difficulties which may have occurred, in the execution of the act “repealing, after the last day of June next, the duties heretofore laid upon distilled spirits, imported from abroad and laying others in their stead, and, also, upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same,” together with his opinion thereupon; the second directing him to report to the House whether any, and what, alterations in favor of the spirits which shall be distilled from articles of the growth or produce of the United States, or from foreign articles, within the same, can, in his opinion, be made in the act for laying duties upon spirits distilled within the United States, consistently with its main design, and with the maintenance of the public faith; the said Secretary respectfully submits the following report:
From the several petitions and memorials which have been referred to the Secretary, as well as from various representations which have been made to him, it appears that objections have arisen in different quarters against the above-mentioned act, which have, in some instances, embarrassed its execution, and inspired a desire of its being repealed; in others, have induced a wish that alterations may be made in some of its provisions.
These objections have reference to a supposed tendency of the act, first to contravene the principles of liberty; secondly, to injure morals; thirdly, to oppress by heavy and excessive penalties; fourthly, to injure industry, and interfere with the business of distilling.
As to the supposed tendency of the act to contravene the principles of liberty, the discussions of the subject which have had place in and out of the Legislature, supersede the necessity of more than a few brief general observations.
It is presumed that a revision of the point cannot, in this respect, weaken the convictions which originally dictated the law.
There can surely be nothing in the nature of an internal duty on a consumable commodity, more incompatible with liberty, than in that of an external duty on a like commodity. A doctrine which asserts, that all duties of the former kind (usually denominated excises) are inconsistent with the genius of a free government, is too violent, and too little reconcilable with the necessities of society, to be true. It would tend to deprive the Government of what is, in most countries, a principal source of revenue, and by narrowing the distribution of taxes, would serve to oppress particular kinds of industry. It would throw, in the first instance, an undue proportion of the public burthen on the merchant and on the landholder.
This is one of those cases in which names have an improper influence, and in which prepossessions exclude a due attention to facts.
Accordingly, the law under consideration is complained of, though free from the features which have served, in other cases, to render laws on the same subject exceptionable; and, though the differences have been pointed out, they have not only been overlooked, but the very things which have been studiously avoided in the formation of the law, are charged upon it, and, that, too, from quarters where its operation would, from circumstances, have worn the least appearance of them.
It has been, heretofore, noticed that the chief circumstances which, in certain excise laws, have given occasion to the charge of their being unfriendly to liberty, are not to be found in the act which is the subject of the report, viz.: first, a summary and discretionary jurisdiction in the excise officers, contrary to the course of the common law, and in abridgment of the right of trial by jury; and, secondly, a general power, in the same officers, to search and inspect, indiscriminately, all the houses and buildings of the persons engaged in the business to which the tax relates.
As to the first particular, there is nothing in the act even to give color to a charge of the kind against it, and, accordingly, it has not been brought. But, as to the second, a very different power has been mistaken for it, and the act is complained of as conferring that very power of indiscriminate search and inspection.
The fact, nevertheless, is otherwise. An officer, under the act in question, can inspect or search no house or building, or even apartment of any house or building, which had not been previously entered and marked by the possessor as a place used for distilling or keeping spirits.
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