for by General Hamilton — of applying the money power to accomplish whatever it might pronounce to be for the general welfare — not only by the direct appropriation of money, but by the imposition of duties and taxes. Indeed, there is no substantial difference between the two; for if Congress have the right to appropriate money, in the shape of bounties, to encourage manufactures — it may, for the same purpose, lay protective duties, to give the manufacturer a monopoly of the home market, and vice versa — and such, accordingly, was the opinion of General Hamilton.
But, although the authors of this act aimed at transferring the bounty it conferred, directly into the pockets of the manufacturers, without passing through the treasury, yet they contemplated, and were prepared to meet the contingency of its bringing into the treasury a sum beyond the wants of the government, when the public debt should be extinguished. Their scheme was, to distribute the surplus among the States — that is, to appropriate to the government of each State, a sum proportioned to its representation in Congress, as an addition to its annual revenue. They thus assumed, not only, that Congress had a right to impose duties to provide, for what it might deem the general welfare — but also, and at the same time, to appropriate the receipts derived from them to the States, respectively — to be applied to their individual and local welfare. This last measure was urged, again and again, on Congress, and would, in all probability have been adopted, had not the act, of which it
