But such
resources could not last long. It was like a man's trying to live upon
his own promissory notes and upon gifts and unsecured loans from his
friends. When the supply of money was exhausted, the Congress soon found
that it could no longer comport itself as a sovereign power; it could
not preserve order at home, and the situation abroad may be illustrated
by the fact that George III. kept garrisons in several of our
northwestern frontier towns and would not send a minister to the United
States. This example shows that, among the sovereign powers of a
government, the power of taxation is the fundamental one upon which all
the others depend. Nothing can go on without money.
But the people of the several states would never consent to grant the
power of taxation, to such a body as the Continental Congress, in
which they were not represented. The Congress was not a legislature,
but a diplomatic body; it did not represent the people, but the state
governments; and a large state like Pennsylvania had no more weight in
it than a little state like Delaware. If there was to be any central
assembly for the whole union, endowed with the power of taxation,
it must be an assembly representing the American people just as the
assembly of a single state represented the people of the state.
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