To secure the complete execution of the system for gradually redeeming the public debt, without disregarding those casualties to which all nations are exposed, it was believed that some additional aids to the treasury would be required.
Upon the nature of these aids, much contrariety of opinion prevailed.
The friends of the administration were in favour of extending the system of indirect internal taxation: but, constituting the minority in one branch of the legislature, they could carry no proposition on which the opposition was united; and the party which had become the majority in the house of representatives, had been generally hostile to that mode of obtaining revenue.

From an opinion that direct taxes were recommended by intrinsic advantages, or that the people would become more attentive to the charges against the administration, should their money be drawn from them by visible means, those who wished power to change hands, had generally manifested a disposition to oblige those who exercised it, to resort to a system of revenue, by which a great degree of sensibility will always be excited.

The indirect taxes proposed in the committee of ways and means were strongly resisted; and only that which proposed an augmentation of the duty on carriages for pleasure was passed into a law.
[Sidenote: Congress adjourns.] On the first day of June, this long and interesting session was terminated.

No preceding legislature had been engaged in discussions by which their own passions, or those of their constituents were more strongly excited; nor on subjects more vitally important to the United States.
From this view of the angry contests of party, it may not be unacceptable to turn aside for a moment, and to look back to a transaction in which the movements of a feeling heart discover themselves, not the less visibly, for being engaged in a struggle with the stern duties of a public station.
[Sidenote: The president endeavors to procure the liberation of Lafayette.] No one of those foreigners who, during the war of the revolution, had engaged in the service of the United States, had embraced their cause with so much enthusiasm, or had held so distinguished a place in the affections of General Washington, as the Marquis de Lafayette.

The attachment of these illustrious personages to each other had been openly expressed, and had yielded neither to time, nor to the remarkable vicissitude of fortune with which the destinies of one of them had been chequered.