Such appears too plainly to be now the case with our nation, and with some other nations. A party of gentlemen may be found in any town, sitting over their wine and foreign fruits, repelling the idea of paying a yearly sum to the state, and laughing, or staring, when the wisest man among them informs them that they pay above 100 per cent. on the collective commodities they use. Tradesmen may be found in every village who think it very grievous to pay a house-tax, while they overlook the price they have to give for their pipe of tobacco and their glass of spirit and water. Some noblemen, perhaps, would rather have higher tailors’ bills for liveries than pay so much a head for their servants. As long as this is the case,—as long as we show that we prefer paying thirty shillings with our eyes shut to a guinea with our eyes open, how can we expect that there will not be hands ready to pocket the difference on the way to the Treasury; and much disposition there to humour us in our blindness? The cry for retrenchment is a righteous cry; but all power of retrenchment does not lie with the Government. The Government may do much; but the people can do more, by getting themselves taxed in the most economical, instead of the most wasteful, manner. It is a good thing to abolish a sinecure, and to cut down the salary of a bishop or a general; but it is an immeasurably greater to get a direct tax substituted for one on cider or paper. All opposition to the principle of a direct tax is an encouragement to the appointment of a host of excisemen and other tax-gatherers, who may, in a very short time, surpass a bench of bishops and a long gradation of military officers in expensiveness to the people. It is time for the people to take care that the greater retrenchments are not hindered through their mistakes, while they are putting their whole souls into the demand for the lesser.