George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[568] competent powers on congress. To the president

Chap. XXVIII.} 1782.

of congress he wrote: ‘No hope of praise or apprehension of blame shall induce me to neglect a duty which I owe to America at large. I disclaim a delicacy which influences some minds to treat the states with tenderness and even adulation, while they are in the habitual inattention to the calls of national interest and honor. Nor will I be deterred from waking those who slumber on the brink of ruin. But my voice is feeble, and I must therefore pray to be assisted by the voice of the United States in congress. Supported by them, I may, perhaps, do something; but, without that support, I must be a useless incumbrance.’ He was convinced that the raising as well as maintaining of a continental army would be infinitely cheaper than armies of the states. A national navy, too, came within the scope of his policy.

To fund the public debt and provide for the regular payment of the interest on it was a primary object with the financier; and for these ends he proposed a very moderate land-tax, a poll-tax, and an excise on distilled liquors. Each of these taxes was estimated to produce half a million; the duty of five per cent on imports, if the states would but consent to it, would produce a million more. The back lands were to be reserved as security for new loans in Europe. All these together were thought sufficient to establish the public credit.

The aggregate expenditures of the United States for the war had been at the rate of twenty millions of dollars in specie annually. The estimates for the year 1782 were for eight millions of dollars. Yet in