34. Sec. 2.) to
that purpose, lying dead as was suggested, should be taken to pay the
bank, and the President be authorized to borrow two millions of dollars
more, out of which it should be replaced: and if this should be done,
the removal of our suspension of payments, as I had been about to
propose, would be premature. He expressed his disapprobation of the
clause above mentioned; thought it highly improper in the legislature to
change an appropriation once made, and added, that no one could tell in
what that would end. I concurred, but observed, that on a division of
the House, the ayes for striking out the clause were twenty-seven, the
noes twenty-six; whereon the Speaker gave his vote against striking out,
which divides the House: the clause for the disappropriation remained
of course. I mentioned suspicions, that the whole of this was a trick
to serve the bank under a great existing embarrassment; that the debt to
the bank was to be repaid by instalments; that the first instalment was
of two hundred thousand dollars only, or rather one hundred and sixty
thousand dollars, (because forty thousand of the two hundred thousand
dollars would be the United States' own dividend of the instalment.) Yet
here were two millions to be paid them at once, and to be taken from a
purpose of gratitude and honor, to which it had been appropriated.
December the 30th, 1792. I took the occasion furnished by Pinckney's
letter of September the 19th, asking instructions how to conduct himself
as to the French revolution, to lay down the catholic principle of
republicanism, to wit, that every people may establish what form of
government they please, and change it as they please; the will of the
nation being the only thing essential.
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