The consternation in the assembly when these enormous propositions were heard, can be easily imagined.  People may differ about religious dogmas.  In the most bigoted persecutions there will always be many who, from conscientious although misguided motives, heartily espouse the cause of the bigot.  Moreover, although resistance to tyranny in matters of faith, is always the most ardent of struggles, and is supported by the most sublime principle in our nature, yet all men are not of the sterner stuff of which martyrs are fashioned.  In questions relating to the world above; many may be seduced from their convictions by interest, or forced into apostasy by violence.  Human nature is often malleable or fusible, where religious interests are concerned, but in affairs material and financial opposition to tyranny is apt to be unanimous.

The interests of commerce and manufacture, when brought into conflict with those of religion, had often proved victorious in the Netherlands.  This new measure, however—­this arbitrary and most prodigious system of taxation, struck home to every fireside.  No individual, however adroit or time-serving, could parry the blow by which all were crushed.

It was most unanswerably maintained in the assembly, that this tenth and twentieth penny would utterly destroy the trade and the manufactures of the country.  The hundredth penny, or the one per cent. assessment on all property throughout the land, although a severe subsidy, might be borne with for once.  To pay, however, a twentieth part of the full value of a house to the government as often as the house was sold, was a most intolerable imposition.  A house might be sold twenty times in a year, and in the course, therefore, of the year be confiscated in its whole value.  It amounted either to a prohibition of all transfers of real estate, or to an eventual surrender of its price.

As to the tenth penny upon articles of merchandise, to be paid by the vendor at every sale, the scheme was monstrous.  All trade and manufactures must, of necessity, expire, at the very first attempt to put it in execution.  The same article might be sold ten times in a week, and might therefore pay one hundred per cent. weekly.  An article, moreover, was frequently compounded of ten, different articles, each of which might pay one hundred per cent., and therefore the manufactured article, if ten times transferred, one thousand per cent. weekly.  Quick transfers and unfettered movements being the nerves and muscles of commerce, it was impossible for it long to survive the paralysis of such a tax.  The impost could never be collected, and would only produce an entire prostration of industry.  It could by no possibility enrich the government.