They were to consider and determine anew the question of
currency. What should be the standard of value and a legal
tender for the payment of debts?
They were to get rid of the vast burden of war taxes which
pressed heavily upon all branches of business.
They were to decide whether the duties on imports which
had been laid to meet the heavy cost of war should be kept
in peace and whether to follow the counsel of Hamilton and
his associates in the first Administration of Washington, or
the counsel of the free traders and the English school of
political economics, in determining whether American industry
should be protected.
The people felt that they had suffered a grievous wrong from
England, and that unless there were reparation, which England
had so far steadily refused either to make or consider, the
honor of the country required that we should exact it by war.
The emigrants from foreign lands who had come to our shores
in vast numbers, and were coming in rapidly increasing numbers,
were made uneasy by the doctrine of perpetual allegiance on
which all Europe insisted.
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