Imposts had been instituted generations before to obtain
funds for clearing the seas of pirates and for making safe the merchant
marine. Because of these laudable objects, imposts had come to be
regarded as a legitimate form of external taxation and as a means of
raising a revenue to meet the expenses of government. The American
people had been familiar with imposts from colonial times; they had
been commonly levied by individual States since independence; and they
had been associated in thought with the National Government in the
vain attempts to revise the Articles by giving it this method of raising
a revenue. "To lay and collect imposts" was indisputably stated in the
Constitution as a power of the Federal Government. All that was
necessary to do was to determine what goods should be liable to a duty
and what the amount of duty should be.
Madison submitted for specific duties a fixed list of articles, which
the Congress had determined upon in 1783, at the time it was requesting
the States to allow it to collect a duty. The list was made up of rum,
molasses, wine, tea, pepper, sugar, cocoa, and coffee.
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