Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/58

48 virtues, to the publick view; not unuseful in their operation, and particularly so in times of ignorance; that of the second, the virtues of generosity, honour and bravery, not unuseful in softening barbaism into civilization, by the magnanimity and even the folly of chivalry: but what virtues for imitation appear in the aristocracy of the present age? Avarice and ambition being its whole soul, what private morals will it infuse, and what national character will it create? It subsists by usurpation, deceit and oppression. A consciousness of fraud, impels it towards perpetration. By ever affecting, and never practising sincerity, it teaches a perpetual fear of treachery, and a perpetual effort to insnare. Its end is distrust and fraud, which convert the earth into a scene of ambuscade, man against man. Its acquisitions inflict misery, without bestowing happiness; because they can only feed a rapacity which can never be satisfied, and a luxury which cannot suppress remorse. In relation to private people, this system may only encourage idleness, teach swindling, ruin individuals, and destroy morals; but allied to a government, it presents a policy of such unrivalled malignity, as only to be expressed by saying, "the government is a speculator upon the liberty and property of the nation." A pamphlet written by Doctor Johnson, to disprove the principles which produced the independence of America, comprises in its title, "taxation no slavery," the whole argument to which the system of paper and patronage, finally flees for refuge. Taxation is not liberty. But the distinction is obvious. It lies plainly between taxes imposed for the benefit of a nation, or for the benefit of a minority; between those designed to defend, or to enslave. Taxation to enrich a minority or aristocracy, is robbery 5 to endow it gradually with power, treason.

It is strange, that it is so difficult to distinguish between honest and fraudulent taxes, imposed by a minor interest on the publick interest, and so easy to discern the real design of taxes Imposed by one cation upon another. In the latter