Your description of the mode of collecting taxes, contains an epitome of the follies, which prevail from one end of the continent to the other. There is no end to the absurdity of human nature; mankind seem to delight in contrast and paradox, for surely nothing else could sanctify (during a contest on the precise point of being taxed by our own consent) the arbitrary police, which on this subject, almost universally prevails. God grant you success in your views to amend it. Your ideas on the subject are perfectly correspondent to my own. As to your doubt on the mode of collecting it, I would wish to obviate it by the observation, that the further off we can remove the appointment of collectors from popular influence, the more effectual will be their operations; and the more they conform to the views of Congress, the more effectually will they enable that body to provide for general defence. In political life, the creature will generally pay some deference to the creator. The having a double set of officers is indeed an evil, but a good thing is not always to be rejected because of that necessary portion of evil, which in the course of things must be attached to it. Neither is this a necessary evil, for with a proper federal government, army, navy, and revenue, the civil administration might well be provided for, by a stamp act, roads by turnpikes, and navigation by tolls. The account you give of the State is by no means flattering; and the more true it appears, the more concern it gives me. The loan I hope will be completed, and I wish the _whole_ amount of the tax may be collected. The forage plan I have disagreed to, and enclose for your information, the copy of my letter on that subject to the Quarter Master General. I believe your State is exhausted, but perhaps even you consider it as being more so than it is. The certificates, which now form a useless load, will (if the United States adopt, and the several States agree, to a plan now before Congress) become valuable property. This will afford great relief. The scarcity of money also may be immediately relieved, if the love of popular favor would so far give way to the love of public good, as to enforce plentiful taxation. The necessity of having money, will always produce money. The desire of having it produces, you see, so much as is necessary to gratify the desire of enjoying foreign luxuries. Turn the stream, which now flows in the channels of commerce, to those of revenue, and the business is completed. Unfortunately for us, this is an operation which requires fortitude, perseverance, virtue, and which cannot be effected by the weak or wicked minds, who have only partial, private, or interested views. When I consider the exertions, which the country has already made, under striking disadvantages, and with astonishing prodigality of national wealth, by pernicious modes of applying it, I persuade myself that regular consistent efforts would produce much more than you suppose.