A distribution to the people is impracticable and unjust in other respects.  It would be taking one man’s property and giving it to another.  Such would be the unavoidable result of a rule of equality (and none other is spoken of or would be likely to be adopted), inasmuch as there is no mode by which the amount of the individual contributions of our citizens to the public revenue can be ascertained.  We know that they contribute unequally, and a rule, therefore, that would distribute to them equally would be liable to all the objections which apply to the principle of an equal division of property.  To make the General Government the instrument of carrying this odious principle into effect would be at once to destroy the means of its usefulness and change the character designed for it by the framers of the Constitution.

But the more extended and injurious consequences likely to result from a policy which would collect a surplus revenue for the purpose of distributing it may be forcibly illustrated by an examination of the effects already produced by the present deposit act.  This act, although certainly designed to secure the safe-keeping of the public revenue, is not entirely free in its tendencies from any of the objections which apply to this principle of distribution.  The Government had without necessity received from the people a large surplus, which, instead of being employed as heretofore and returned to them by means of the public expenditure, was deposited with sundry banks.  The banks proceeded to make loans upon this surplus, and thus converted it into banking capital, and in this manner it has tended to multiply bank charters and has had a great agency in producing a spirit of wild speculation.  The possession and use of the property out of which this surplus was created belonged to the people, but the Government has transferred its possession to incorporated banks, whose interest and effort it is to make large profits out of its use.  This process need only be stated to show its injustice and bad policy.

And the same observations apply to the influence which is produced by the steps necessary to collect as well as to distribute such a revenue.  About three-fifths of all the duties on imports are paid in the city of New York, but it is obvious that the means to pay those duties are drawn from every quarter of the Union.  Every citizen in every State who purchases and consumes an article which has paid a duty at that port contributes to the accumulating mass.  The surplus collected there must therefore be made up of moneys or property withdrawn from other points and other States.  Thus the wealth and business of every region from which these surplus funds proceed must be to some extent injured, while that of the place where the funds are concentrated and are employed in banking are proportionably extended.  But both in making the transfer of the funds which are first necessary to pay the duties