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Continental Congress Remarks on Appropriating the Impost Exclusively to the Army, [19 February 1783]

Continental Congress
Remarks on Appropriating
the Impost Exclusively to the Army

[Philadelphia, February 19, 1783]

Mr. Hamilton opposed the motion1 strenuously, declared that as a friend to the army as well as to the other Creditors & to the public at large he could never assent to such a partial dispensation of Justice; that the different States being differently attached to different branches of the public debt would never concur in establishg. a fund wch. was not extended to every branch; that it was impolitic to divide the interests of the civil & military Creditors, whose joint efforts in the States would be necessary to prevail on them to adopt a general revenue.

“Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress,” MS, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress.

1John Rutledge had made a motion that the impost should be used exclusively for the Army. This was a renewal of a proposal which he had made in the committee of the whole on February 18.

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