It is never, therefore, wise to quarrel with the interested views of men, whilst they are combined with the public interest and promote it:  it is our business to tie the knot, if possible, closer.  Resources that are derived from extraordinary virtues, as such virtues are rare, so they must be unproductive.  It is a good thing for a moneyed man to pledge his property on the welfare of his country:  he shows that he places his treasure where his heart is; and revolving in this circle, we know, that, “wherever a man’s treasure is, there his heart will be also.”  For these reasons, and on these principles, I have been sorry to see the attempts which have been made, with more good meaning than foresight and consideration, towards raising the annual interest of this loan by private contributions.  Wherever a regular revenue is established, there voluntary contribution can answer no purpose but to disorder and disturb it in its course.  To recur to such aids is, for so much, to dissolve the community, and to return to a state of unconnected Nature.  And even if such a supply should be productive in a degree commensurate to its object, it must also be productive of much vexation and much oppression.  Either the citizens by the proposed duties pay their proportion according to some rate made by public authority, or they do not.  If the law be well made, and the contributions founded on just proportions, everything superadded by something that is not as regular as law, and as uniform in its operation, will become more or less out of proportion.  If, on the contrary, the law be not made upon proper calculation, it is a disgrace to the public; wisdom, which fails in skill to assess the citizen in just measure and according to his means.  But the hand of authority is not always the most heavy hand.  It is obvious that men may be oppressed by many ways besides those which take their course from the supreme power of the state.  Suppose the payment to be wholly discretionary.  Whatever has its origin in caprice is sure not to improve in its progress, nor to end in reason.  It is impossible for each private individual to have any measure conformable to the particular condition of each of his fellow-citizens, or to the general exigencies of his country.  ’Tis a random shot at best.

When men proceed in this irregular mode, the first contributor is apt to grow peevish with his neighbors.  He is but too well disposed to measure their means by his own envy, and not by the real state of their fortunes, which he can rarely know, and which it may in them be an act of the grossest imprudence to reveal.  Hence the odium and lassitude with which people will look upon a provision for the public which is bought by discord at the expense of social quiet.  Hence the bitter heart-burnings, and the war of tongues, which is so often the prelude to other wars.  Nor is it every contribution, called voluntary, which is according to the free will of the giver.  A false shame, or a false glory, against his feelings