75/148 They had been laid against their protest and collected under military menace. They were of those Federal measures of which they would have none. John Randolph, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, reported, March 2, 1802, against the entire system of internal duties, in the old words of the Pennsylvania radicals, as vexatious, oppressive, and peculiarly obnoxious; as of the nature of an excise which is hostile to the genius of a free people, and finally because of their tendency to multiply offices and increase the patronage of the executive. The repeal was imperative upon the Republican party. On April 6, 1802, the act was repealed and the surplus of the budget stripped from it, without Mr. |