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Badly in need of revenue, congress voted in 1781 to institute a Continental duty on imports. Under the Articles of Confederation, the assent of all thirteen states was needed to pass the tax. Rhode Island's delegates, who felt that it was their duty to protect their constituents from federal taxation, refused to ratify the impost.
The ensuing struggle between congress and Rhode Island over the impost was immensely demoralizing to those delegates who had high hopes for cooperation between the states in collective ventures. For someone like Hamilton, who was vehemently opposed to state independence on any level, the impasse only helped justify his position. On the caprice of only one state, the wheels of government could be ground to a halt, and this demonstrated in the world theater while American delegates were trying to establish credit abroad.
Hamilton was appointed to a three-man delegation charged with the task of appealing in person to the Rhode Island state assembly. The delegation's mission was canceled when Virginia, the most formidable state of the confederacy, decided to exercise its own caprice and withdraw its support of the impost as well. Rumor had it that the Virginia representatives did so just to annoy Robert Morris, an impost proponent.
The measure of 1781 was formally dead, but a revised impost was brought before congress in early 1783. After years of wrangling, the revised impost finally garnered unanimous approval--in 1786.
The impost controversy emphasized how seemingly impossible it was for all states to agree on matters of revenue. Earlier, in 1782, Hamilton correctly diagnosed the "general disease" infecting American politics as "an excess of popularity. ...The inquiry constantly is what will please not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient fickleness and folly." While in the center of the impost storm, Hamilton saw the fickleness and folly he so resented paralyze the government.
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