The internal duties were introduced in separate bills, that each might encounter only those objections which could be made to itself; and that the loss of one might not involve the loss of others.

The resolution in favour of stamps was rejected: the others were carried, after repeated and obstinate debates.

The members of the opposition were in favour of raising the whole sum required by additional burdens on trade, and by direct taxes.
While these measures were depending before congress, memorials and resolutions against them were presented by the manufacturers, which were expressed in terms of disrespect that evidenced the sense in which numbers understood the doctrine, _that the people were sovereign, and those who administered the government, their servants_.
This opportunity for charging the government with tyranny and oppression, with partiality and injustice, was too favourable not to be embraced by the democratic societies, those self proclaimed watchful sentinels over the rights of the people.

A person unacquainted with those motives which, in the struggle of party, too often influence the conduct of men, would have supposed a direct tax to be not only in itself more eligible, but to be more acceptable to the community than those which were proposed.

To the more judicious observers of the springs of human action, the reverse was known to be the fact.
[Illustration: George Washington's Bedroom at Mount Vernon _It was in this room that Washington expired, December 14, 1799.