Till they are enabled thus to view their own position, it is not wonderful, however deplorable, that they should quarrel with a just tax because it is unequally imposed, ascribing to the principle the faults committed in its application. This is the less surprising too, because their teeth have been set on edge by the sour grapes with which their fathers were surfeited. A lavish expenditure and accumulating debt have rendered odious the name and notion of every tax under heaven. Great allowance must be made for the effects of such ignorance and such irritation. Let the time be hastened when a people, enlightened to its lowest rank, may behold its meanest members heard with deference instead of treated with allowance, if they shall see reason for remonstrance in regard to their contributions to the state! When they once know what is the waste in the department of the Customs, and the oppression and fraud in that of the Excise,—what are the effects of taxes on raw produce, and on the transfer of property, and how multiplied beyond all decency are the burdens of local taxation, they will value every approach towards a plan of direct levy, and will wonder at their own clamour about the house and window taxes, (except as to their inequality of imposition,) while so many worse remained unnoticed. I shall attempt to exhibit the effects on industry and happiness of our different kinds of taxes in a few more tales; and I only wish I had the power to render my picture of a country of untaxed commodities as attractive in fiction as I am sure it would be in reality. Meantime, I trust preparation will be making in other quarters for imparting to the people those political principles which they desire to have for guides in these stirring times, when every man must act: those principles which will stimulate them at once to keep watch over the responsibilities of their rulers, and to discharge their own. -------