Federalist No. 30

In Federalist No. 30, Hamilton addresses the issue of taxation.

In this essay, Hamilton makes it clear that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another. After all, money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.

Hamilton also argues that the ends of public happiness will be promoted by supplying the wants of government, and all beyond this is unworthy of our care or anxiety. To support this position, he asks how is it possible that a government half supplied and always necessitous,
can fulfill the purposes of its institution, can provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the reputation of the commonwealth? How can it ever possess either energy or stability, dignity or credit, confidence at home or respectability abroad? How can its administration be any thing else than a succession of expedients temporizing, impotent, disgraceful? How will it be able to avoid a frequent sacrifice of its engagements to immediate necessity? How can it undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged plans of public good
? In other words, a government must be adequately funded to do its job.

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require and take the actions necessary to maintain, and defend, the Union.