1. Both Adams Papers.

2. This paragraph, like the one preceding it, is in response to Tufts' letter of 26 June (Adams Papers). As JA well understands here, the manner in which Congress raised money to pay off its debts would determine whether the United States would develop a strong central government or remain a collection of sovereign states. Those who favored the first course wanted Congress to have the power to levy taxes and to appoint and control its own tax collectors. Their opponents preferred either to divide the national debt among the states or to have the states collect the money and turn it over to Congress as payment of their share of the cost of government. In April Congress offered the states a number of proposals, packaged as one, that would give Congress power to levy duties on foreign imports for twenty-five years in order to pay the interest and principal of the national debt, and to levy an additional tax of $1,500,000 annually, apportioned among the states, also for twenty-five years; that would have all states cede their western land claims in accordance with the congressional resolu• {p. 242} tions of 1780; and that would offer the states an amendment to the Articles of Confederation changing the proportion of assessments on the states from one based on land values to one based on population, with three-fifths of the slaves being counted. Aside from their dislike of the different effects that duties and taxes would have in different regions, opponents of the package of proposals feared that the new duties and taxes would create too powerful a central government, one dangerous to liberty. JCC , 24:170–174, 223–224, 256–262; Jensen, The New Nation , p. 400, 407–419.

3. Negotiating a commercial treaty with Great Britain.