It follows, from this, that both rent and taxes, to a certain degree, increase the wealth of a people, by augmenting their industry.  As rent is not compulsive, it never can in general be carried beyond the point that augmented industry will bear; but taxes are not either regulated by the industry of the individual, or of the community; they may therefore be carried too far, and when they are, the people become degraded, disheartened, their independent spirit is lost and broken, and industry, in place of increasing, as it did in the first stages of taxation, flies away.

The government, in this case, generally becomes more severe, and certainly more obnoxious.  The broken spirit of the people makes submission a matter of course, so that there is no effectual resistance made to its power.  Incapacity to pay comes at last, and defeats the end; but, between incapacity and resistance, the difference is very wide.

As calculators have been predicting the moment of a total stoppage to the increase of revenue for nearly half a century; as ministers, themselves, have never ventured to lay on a new burthen, except when forced to it by necessity. {92} As taxes have been laid on at random, in a manner similar to that in which the streets and houses of old cities were built, without regularity or design, and as the effects predicted have not taken place, it is fair to conclude, that the subject is not well understood.  If it were, the evil would be in the way to be obviated; but still the conclusion would be the same, that increased taxation tends to bring on discontent, and to drive men and capital from a country.  The degree of tendency, and the rapidity of its operations, are a question; but respecting the tendency itself there can be no question.

Two things more are to be observed, relative to the effects of taxation, as tending towards decline.  The first is, that the taxes are levied by and expended on men, who, having income only for their lives,

—–­ {92} Mr. Pitt seems an exception to this; but the establishment of a sinking fund, at the end of the war, was as necessary for his administration as any of the loans, during the war, were for Lord North; and both measures required new taxes. -=-

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generally leave families in distress.  Those who lose their parents when young are often left destitute, and those who are farther advanced are frequently ruined by being educated and accustomed to a rank in life that they are not able to support.  This is a very great evil, and is renewed as it were every generation.  As the revenues of a country increase, this evil increases also:  for, except what goes to the proprietors of money in the stocks, all the public revenue, very nearly, goes to people whose income perishes with themselves.  To begin with those who collect the taxes, custom-house officers, excise men, collectors, and clerks of every rank and demonination =sic=, there is not one in ten who does not die in indigence; and if he leaves a family, he leaves it in distress.