With this circular letter, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton requests financial information to respond to an order from the U.S. Senate. This copy went to Commissioner of Loans for Pennsylvania Thomas Smith. Hamilton submitted the report titled “List of Civil Officers of the United States, Except Judges, with Their Emoluments, for the Year Ending October 1, 1792” to the Senate on February 27, 1793.

“Joseph Rice is become Bankrupt within the meaning of the Acts of Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

John Rice, a ship’s carpenter in Kensington, a neighborhood of Philadelphia, filed this deposition stating that his brother, Joseph Rice, owed him more than £200 and had become bankrupt within the meaning of the Acts of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Franklin signed the deposition as President of the Council of Pennsylvania, a position he held from 1785 to 1788.

When he signed this document on Saturday, August 18, 1787, Franklin was also the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention, which was meeting in Philadelphia. The Convention agreed to a committee consisting of one member per state to consider the assumption of state debts and continued its discussion of Article VII, Section 1, the enumeration of Congressional powers.

Excerpts

“all spirits which shall be distilled in the United States, in stills which shall not have been previously entered at some office of inspection, shall be liable, together with the stills or other vessels used in the distillation thereof, to seizure and forfeiture.” (sec. 2)

“any person or persons, who shall counterfeit the certificates for, or the marks or numbers to be set upon any cask, vessel or package containing wines, teas, or foreign or domestic distilled spirits, or upon stills... shall, for every such offence, forfeit and pay the sum of one hundred dollars.” (sec. 7)

“That it shall and may be lawful for the judicial courts of the several states, and of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, and of the territory of the United States south of the river Ohio, to take cognizance of all and every suit and suits, action and actions, cause and causes, arising under or out of the laws for collecting a revenue upon spirits distilled in the United States, and upon stills, which may arise or accrue at a greater distance, than fifty miles from the nearest place established by law for holding a district court.” (sec. 9)

“That the judicial courts of the several states, to whom, by this act, a jurisdiction is given, shall and may exercise all and every power… for the purpose of obtaining a mitigation or remission of any fine, penalty or forfeiture, which may be exercised by the judges of the district courts, in cases depending before them... ” (sec. 18)