James Madison Papers
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Public Debt, [12 March] 1790

Public Debt

[12 March 1790]

Laurance, objecting to Jackson’s motion (see headnote to speech of 11 Mar.), said that foreigners should be encouraged to speculate in the public debt.

Mr. Madison said that foreigners speculating in our funds would induce a spirit of luxury. That the pernicious consequences of credit had been severely felt; that our experience did not justify the supposition that an influx of active property, or money would be employed in agricultural improvements.

He did not think that if a medium to the amount of one-fourth of the value of all the property of the United States was to be thrown into circulation, that any more land would be cultivated.

Gazette of the U.S., 3 Apr. 1790. Jackson’s motion was defeated. The third alternative was then adopted, but the blanks were left to be filled up. The Committee of the Whole completed its consideration of the sixth resolution by rejecting the fourth and fifth alternatives. On 13 Mar. the seventh and eighth of FitzSimons’s resolutions were agreed to. The Committee of the Whole then reported these eight resolutions. The House postponed formal consideration of them until 29 Mar. (ibid., 13 Mar. 1790; N.Y. Daily Gazette, 13 and 15 Mar. 1790; DHFC description begins Linda Grant De Pauw et al., eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America (3 vols. to date; Baltimore, 1972—). description ends , III, 328–29, 347–48). For the original resolutions and the action taken on them by the Committee of the Whole, see N.Y. Daily Gazette, 15 Mar. 1790 (the amended resolutions are in DHFC description begins Linda Grant De Pauw et al., eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America (3 vols. to date; Baltimore, 1972—). description ends , III, 347–48).

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    Madison Papers
    Title
    Public Debt, [12 March] 1790
    Author
    Madison, James
    Date
    12 March 1790

    Reference

    Cite as
    “Public Debt, [12 March] 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-13-02-0070. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 13, 20 January 1790 – 31 March 1791, ed. Charles F. Hobson and Robert A. Rutland. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981, p. 102.]