The contest opened on the Clintonian side, with the argument that an
amended Confederation was all that was necessary for the purposes of a
more general welfare. The plan advanced was that Congress should be
given the power to compel by force the payment of the requisitions which
the States so often ignored. Hamilton demolished this proposition with
one of his most scornful outbursts.
Coerce the States! [he cried]. Never was a madder project devised!
Do you imagine that the result of the failure of one State to
comply would be confined to that State alone? Are you so willing to
hazard a civil war? Consider the refusal of Massachusetts, the
attempt at compulsion by Congress. What a series of pictures does
this conjure up? A powerful State procuring immediate assistance
from other States, particularly from some delinquent! A complying
State at war with a non-complying State! Congress marching the
troops of one State into the bosom of another! This State
collecting auxiliaries and forming perhaps a majority against its
Federal head! And can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a
government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting
itself?--a government that can exist only by the sword? And what
sort of a State would it be which would suffer itself to be used as
the instrument of coercing another? .
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