Notes on Debates, 17 January 1783
Notes on Debates
MS (LC: Madison Papers). For a description of the manuscript of Notes on Debates, see , V, 231–34.
The Committee on the motion of Mr. Peters of the day of relative to a further application for foreign loans, reported that they had conferred with the superintendt. of Finance1 & concurred in opinion with him, that the applications already on foot were as great as could be made prudently, until proper funds should be established.2 The latent view of this report was to strengthen the argt. in favr. of such funds, and the report it was agreed should lie on the table3 to be considered along with the report which might be made on the memorial from the army, & which wd involve the same subject.4
The report thanking Gel. Greene for his Services was agreed to without opposition or observation. Several however thought it badly composed, and that some notice ought to have been taken of Majr. Burnet aid to Gl. G. who was the bearer of the letter announcing the evacuation of Charlestown.5
Mr. Webster & Mr. Judd agents for the deranged officers of the Massachusetts & Cont. lines were heard by the Gd. Committee, in favr. of their constituents. The sum of their representations was that the sd. officers were equally distressed for, entitled to, & in expectation of provision for fulfilling the rewards stipulated to them, as officers retained in Service6
1. The blank spaces should be filled with “13th” and “January,” respectively. See JM Notes, 13 Jan. 1783, and nn. 2, 8.
2. Delegates to Harrison, 7 Jan. and n. 5; JM Notes, 9–10 Jan. 1783, and nn. 12, 14. By “proper funds” JM meant an assured income from domestic sources such as the proposed impost or payment by many of the states of the long-in-arrears financial requisitions of Congress.
3. , XXIV, 48–49. The unexpressed or “latent” tenor of the committee’s report was that Congress must establish “proper funds” or else the hope of borrowing more money overseas would not be realized.
4. JM Notes, 6 Jan., and n. 2; 7 Jan., and n. 4; 13 Jan. 1783, and n. 16.
5. Harrison to Delegates, 11 Jan., and nn. 5, 6; JM Notes, 15 Jan., and n. 3; 26 Feb. 1783, and n. 6; JCC, XXIV, 47–48, 48, n. 1.
6. JM Notes, 13 Jan., and n. 20. The memorial, drafted by Pelatiah Webster and William Judd on behalf of deranged officers of the Connecticut line, had been first submitted to Congress late in July 1782. The lengthy consideration accorded the memorial at that time was concluded by a resolution deferring further attention to the matter until 1 January 1783. During the debate in July, Theodorick Bland offered the motion which is erroneously entered in the printed journal for 8 January 1783 (, IV, 444–45; 446, n. 3; 450–51; 451, n. 2; , XXIV, 43, and n. 1).
On that date, having been reminded by Webster and Judd of the above memorial and having received from Webster on 7 January a separate petition on behalf of the deranged officers of the Massachusetts line, Congress referred both documents to the grand committee, which had been appointed on 6 January to consider the memorial from the officers of Washington’s army (NA: PCC, No. 19, VI, 504–5, 507; JM Notes, 6 Jan. 1783; , XXIV, 43, and n. 1). See also JM Notes, 24 Jan.; 25 Jan. 1783; , XXIV, 154, n. 1, 169–70, 170, n. 1.
Born in Connecticut, Pelatiah Webster (1725–1795) was graduated by Yale College, served briefly as a pastor in Massachusetts, and thereafter became a merchant in Philadelphia. A staunch patriot, he was imprisoned and lost much property during the occupation of that city by the British. He is principally remembered as the author of essays on trade and finance, and above all, of A Dissertation on the Political Union and Constitution of the Thirteen United States of North America, published in 1783.
William Judd (ca. 1740–1804) of Farmington, Conn., rose from private to major in the militia, 1757–1776. Commissioned captain in the continental army on 1 January 1777, he served until deranged in grade of major just four years later. He was a member of the General Assembly, 1785–1794, and voted for ratification of the Federal Constitution in the state convention of 1788. Prominent as a Jeffersonian Republican, he was deprived of his commission as justice of the peace by the Federalist-dominated legislature in 1804, because he insisted that the royal charter, under which the state government continued to operate, was not equivalent to a constitution adopted by the people (Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, IX [1903], 223; X [1905], 44, 150, 260, 334; , XV, 319, and n. 3; , V, 750; Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 1775–1818 [Washington, 1918], pp. 254–64).