It was desirable immediately to quiet the minds of the public creditors by assuring them that justice would be done; to simplify the forms of public debt; and to put an end to that speculation which had been so much reprobated, and which could be terminated only by giving the debt a real and permanent value.
That the assumption would impair the just influence of the states was controverted with great strength of argument.

The diffusive representation in the state legislatures, the intimate connexion between the representative and his constituents, the influence of the state legislatures over the members of one branch of the national legislature, the nature of the powers exercised by the state governments which perpetually presented them to the people in a point of view calculated to lay hold of the public affections, were guarantees that the states would retain their due weight in the political system, and that a debt was not necessary to the solidity or duration of their power.
But the argument it was said proved too much.

If a debt was now essential to the preservation of state authority, it would always be so.

It must therefore never be extinguished, but must be perpetuated, in order to secure the existence of the state governments.

If, for this purpose, it was indispensable that the expenses of the revolutionary war should be borne by the states, it would not be less indispensable that the expenses of future wars should be borne in the same manner.