In some of the States systems of internal improvements have been
projected, consisting of roads and canals, many of which, taken
separately, were not of sufficient public importance to justify a tax on
the entire population of the State to effect their construction, and yet
by a combination of local interests, operating on a majority of the
legislature, the whole have been authorized and the States plunged into
heavy debts. To an extent so ruinous has this system of legislation been
carried in some portions of the Union that the people have found it
necessary to their own safety and prosperity to forbid their
legislatures, by constitutional restrictions, to contract public debts
for such purposes without their immediate consent.
If the abuse of power has been so fatal in the States, where the systems
of taxation are direct and the representatives responsible at short
periods to small masses of constituents, how much greater danger of
abuse is to be apprehended in the General Government, whose revenues are
raised by indirect taxation and whose functionaries are responsible to
the people in larger masses and for longer terms.
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