foreign or domestic. So also an excise on domestic productions, as on beer brewed, or spirits distilled in the country, or on the sale of such articles as have been imported. In all these cases, such is the nature of the subjects, that they sooner or later perish in the use. Under the same head of indirect taxes, comes duties on sales and transfers on registration, on certificates, and licences; and duties on stamps made necessary for the authentication of written instruments.

I do not here pretend to enumerate all the subjects of taxation in this mode; such taxes have been almost infinitely extended by the ingenuity of financiers. They have been extended, not only to all the productions of human industry, and the enjoyments of domestic comfort, but to the common gifts of nature,—to light and genial heat. Such is the window tax, and hearth tax in England, and other countries. Taxes of this kind, unless laid on the absolute necessaries of life, which ought always to be avoided if possible, are never compulsory on the contributor, the consumer. He is left to his own option whether he will purchase for his use, the article taxed or not. It is true, that in general, it is the safest, cheapest, and least onorous mode of collecting and realizing a tax by government.—It is advanced by the exporter, importer, and producer of the articles taxed, wherever that mode can be adopted, who recompense themselves by adding the amount of tax, with reasonable profits, to the price of the article sold; so that the consumer, becomes the ultimate contributor, by paying his proportion of the tax in the price of the article he chooses to purchase. It is true, the ultimate inequality on the contributors may be as great in the payment of indirect as of direct taxes; but in the latter, the inequality is compulsory; in the former, voluntary. The contributor may, at his election, pay either more or less than would be his proportion according to his actual income.

It has another advantage over direct taxation; that when once in steady operation, the contributor can never be surprised, or his plans of economy or enterprize be deranged by an unexpected demand on his finances. Uncalled for and unnoticed by itself, it necessarily, and if I may use the word, spontaneously unites itself in all the data from which he makes his calculations. Indirect taxes will therefore be preferred in a

port of government, are far from being the least useful class to the state.

The exigencies of the state must limit the aggregate sum to be demanded in taxes. But the demand ought not, for any continuance, to equal the sum of private revenue, much less ought it to be suffered to diminish the capital stock. Were the government, by thus anticipating the revenue of its citizens, to deprive them of the comfortable prospect of a provision for the future, it would take away all incitement to enterprize, and even the spirit of private industry and economy. If, in addition to this, the enormity of the demand should constantly diminish the capital stock, nothing would be presented to the view but the gloomy prospect of inevitable poverty and distress. The same observations will apply to those burdens which, through the unequal mode of assessment, fall most severely on particular classes only.

The mode of apportionment ought not to be directed by the interests of any single classes of citizens, but by the interests of the whole, which consists in a certain ratio of the particular interests. If, in the political consideration of taxes, the interest of the state,-by which nothing more is generally meant than the interest of the majority,-come in competition with the interest of a particular class of citizens in their lawful pursuits, their interests ought not to be wholly sacrificed to that of the state, much less to that of another class. Every affair of this nature ought to be conducted upon the principles of a compromise of interests. In adjusting the compromise, however, the magnitude of any interests in competition is not to be adopted as the only rule of preference. Such rule would frequently prove a total sacrifice of the minor interest. Where it is demanded of particular persons or particular classes, that they give up their interest for the public service, they are as fully-as in cases that arise between individuals-entitled to a compensation for all that which exceeds their just proportion.

Second. Indirect taxes are such as are assessed upon subjects, not in regard to the revenue they may produce to individuals or their use in possession, but to their use in consumption. Such are duties on the importation and exportation of articles for a sale of consumption, whether the consumption intended be

foreign or domestic. So also an excise on domestic productions, as on beer brewed, or spirits distilled in the country, or on the sale of such articles as have been imported. In all these cases, such is the nature of the subjects, that they sooner or later perish in the use. Under the same head of indirect taxes, comes duties on sales and transfers on registration, on certificates, and licences; and duties on stamps made necessary for the authentication of written instruments.

. I do not here pretend to enumerate all the subjects of taxation in this mode; such taxes have been almost infinitely extended by the ingenuity of financiers. They have been extended, not only to all the productions of human industry, and the enjoyments of domestic comfort, but to the common gifts of nature,—to light and genial heat. Such is the window tax, and hearth tax in England, and other countries. Taxes of this kind, unless laid on the absolute necessaries of life, which ought always to be avoided if possible, are never compulsory on the contributor, the consumer. He is left to his own option whether he will purchase for his use, the article taxed or not. It is true, that in general, it is the safest, cheapest, and least onorous mode of collecting and realizing a tax by government.—It is advanced by the exporter, importer, and producer of the articles taxed, wherever that mode can be adopted, who recompense themselves by adding the amount of tax, with reasonable profits, to the price of the article sold; so that the consumer, becomes the ultimate contributor, by paying his proportion of the tax in the price of the article he chooses to purchase. It is true, the ultimate inequality on the contributors may be as great in the payment of indirect as of direct taxes; but in the latter, the inequality is compulsory; in the former, voluntary. The contributor may, at his election, pay either more or less than would be his proportion according to his actual income.

It has another advantage over direct taxation; that when once in steady operation, the contributor can never be sur prised, or his plans of economy or enterprize be deranged by an unexpected demand on his finances. Uncalled for and unnoticed by itself, it necessarily, and if I may use the word, spontaneously unites itself in all the data from which he makes his calculations. Indirect taxes will therefore be preferred in a

and affords more accommodation to the community at large. And this is the more apparent when we find the raw material of the manufacture indigenous, and the means of subsistance abundant. Besides every commercial and manufacturing nation make regulations to favor their own manufactures and productions of every kind; and for that purpose frequently lay heavy duties, not only on the articles of manufacture imported from abroad, but upon every article of subsistence, and materials which are found, or can be produced among themselves, and sometimes amounting to a prohibition. These duties extend to almost every article of remittance, and are paid by that nation who are supplied with their manufactures. This evil can generally be corrected, only by retalliating duties on the part of the nation thus supplied, and which is, in fact, made tributary to the supplying nation. But in discriminating duties, it will be necessary to act with prudence and a' great degree of caution, whether the increase of duties be intended for the regulation of foreign or of internal commerce,—for the encouragement of domestic manufactures,-lest it should effect too suddenly a diminution of profits in any particular branch already established, to the great injury, or perhaps ruin of those who are employed in it.

The limits prescribed in this work will not permit us here to enter into a more particular detail upon this subject which constitutes a very extensive branch of political economy, and has been discussed at large, by writers of the first talents whose works are in the hands, or at the command of all those who may be desirous of further and more particular information.

BOOK VII.

OF THE GOVERNMEMT OF THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.

Political Situation of the Colonies,-afterwards Independent States-previous to the Establishment of the present Constitution of the United States.

The government of the United States exhibits a new scene, and may truly be said to commence a new era in the political history of the world, when a number of integral republics, each, then sovereign and independent, undertook to establish over the whole, a general government with full powers of legislation for all national purposes, and of executing its laws on the citizens, independent of the local authorities. The experiment was new, and the event has been watched with anxiety by the friends and the enemies of free institutions. A system so complicated, so different from that of a simple, or single government, of which we have been treating, must have an effect in the application of the laws of nature, from which the general principles are derived to give a different modification to those principles, owing to the different combination, and relative circumstances of the constituent parts, and to have an influence on the organization of the general government, and the adjustment of the powers of all and each, to the relations it is intended they should sustain with each other.

The several American states, while they remained colonies, or provinces of the British empire, had no political connexion,