government, incapable of pledging any permanent resources to redeem its debts? It would be the common case of needy individuals, who must borrow upon onerous conditions and usury, because they cannot promise a punctilious discharge of their engagements.[1] It would, therefore, not only not be wise, but be the extreme of folly to stop short of adequate resources for all emergencies, and to leave the government entrusted with the care of the national defence in a state of total, or partial incapacity to provide for the protection of the community against future invasions of the public peace by foreign war, or domestic convulsions. If, indeed, we are to try the novel, not to say absurd experiment in politics, of tying up the hands of government from protective and offensive war, founded upon reasons of state, we ought certainly to be able to compel foreign nations to abstain from all measures, which shall injure, or cripple us.[2] We must be able to repress their ambition, and disarm their enmity; to conquer their prejudices, and destroy their rivalries and jealousies. Who is so visionary, as to dream of such a moral influence in a republic over the whole world? It should never be forgotten, that the chief sources of expense in every government have ever arisen from wars and rebellions, from foreign ambition and enmity, or from domestic insurrections and factions. And it may well be presumed, that what has been in the past, will continue to be in the future.
§ 934. Besides; it is manifest, that however adequate commercial imposts might be for the ordinary expenditures of peace, the operations of war might, and indeed ordinarily would, if our adversary possess-Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/415
CH. XIV.]
POWERS OF CONGRESS—TAXES.
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