Page:Observations on the present financial embarassments.djvu/10

6 death was one of the greatest calamities that could have befallen this country, is well known to have been of opinion, that the present financial system required much revision. Much as his loss would have been to be lamented at any time, at none could it have been more felt than in our present embarrassed situation, when talents such as his can be ill spared to the country.

I shall assume, as the basis of the following remarks, that that mode of taxation must be most advisable, which presses with least severity on the sources of industry. And it is because Government have not sufficiently adverted to this principle, that a great remission of taxes, which has been made since the war, has been attended with so little public benefit. At one time popular clamour was for the repeal of the property tax; at another it has been for the repeal of the assessed taxes. But, severe as the property tax or the assessed taxes may fall on individuals, I question much, whether the total repeal, to-morrow, of the assessed taxes would be productive of any benefit, whilst I strongly suspect, it would occasion considerable evil to the country. The fallacy of the argument in favour of any such repeal appears to me to consist in the expectation that, if individuals paid less to the tax-gatherer, they would expend a larger sum in the purchase of articles,—that thus the demand for commodities would be increased, and, consequently, the