With unwearied perseverance they digested and obtained the assent of congress to a system, which, though unequal to what their wishes would have prepared, or their judgments have approved, was believed to be the best that was attainable.

The great object in view was, "to restore and support public credit," to effect which it was necessary, "to obtain from the states substantial funds for funding the whole debt of the United States." The committee[26] to whom this interesting subject was referred, reported sundry resolutions, recommending it to the several states, to vest in congress permanent and productive funds adequate to the immediate payment of the interest on the national debt, and to the gradual extinction of the principal.

A change in the rule by which the proportions of the different states were to be ascertained, was also recommended.

In lieu of that article of the confederation which apportions on them the sums required for the public treasury, according to the value of their located lands with the improvements thereon, it was proposed to substitute another more capable of execution, which should make the population of each state the measure of its contribution.[27] [Footnote 26: Mr.Fitzsimmons, and Mr.Rutledge.] [Footnote 27: On a subsequent occasion, an attempt was made to obtain a resolution of congress, recommending as an additional amendment to the eighth article of the confederation, that the taxes for the use of the continent should be laid and levied separate from any other tax, and should be paid directly into the national treasury; and that the collectors respectively should be liable to an execution to be issued by the treasurer, or his deputy, under the direction of congress, for any arrears of taxes by him to be collected, which should not be paid into the treasury in conformity with the requisitions of congress.
Such was the prevalence of state policy, even in the government of the union, or such the conviction of the inutility of recommending such an amendment, that a vote of congress could not be obtained for asking this salutary regulation as a security for the revenue only for eight years.] To the application which congress had made during the war for power to levy an impost of five per cent on imported and prize goods, one state had never assented, and another had withdrawn the assent it had previously given.
It was impossible to yield to some of the objections which had been made to this measure, because they went to the certain destruction of the system itself; but in points where the alterations demanded, though mischievous, were not fatal to the plan, it was thought adviseable to accommodate the recommendations of the government to the prejudices which had been disclosed.

It had been insisted that the power of appointing persons to collect the duties, would enable congress to introduce into a state, officers unknown and unaccountable to the government thereof; and that a power to collect an indefinite sum for an indefinite time, for the expenditure of which that body could not be accountable to the states, would render it independent of its constituents, and would be dangerous to liberty.