8291. TAXATION, Extravagant.—
If
anything could revolt our citizens against the
war, it would be the extravagance with which
they are about to be taxed. It is strange indeed
that at this day, and in a country where
English proceedings are so familiar, the principles
and advantages of funding should be
neglected, and expedients resorted to. Their
new bank, if not abortive at its birth, will not
last through one campaign; and the taxes proposed
cannot be paid. How can a people who
cannot get fifty cents a bushel for their wheat,
while they pay twelve dollars a bushel for
their salt, pay five times the amount of taxes
they ever paid before? Yet that will be the
case in all the States south of the Potomac.
Our resources are competent to the maintenance
of the war if duly economized and
skillfully employed in the way of anticipation.
However, we must suffer, I suppose, * * *
and consider now, as in the Revolutionary
war, that although the evils of resistance are
great, those of submission would be greater.
We must meet, therefore, the former as the
casualties of tempests and earthquakes, and
like them necessarily resulting from the constitution
of the world.—
To William Short. Washington ed. vi, 400.
(M.
Nov. 1814)
