Believing that taxes fell chiefly upon the better sort, they care
not what they lay, as thinking they will not be felt; but when they
come to be levied, they either fall short, and so run the public
into an immense debt, or they light so heavily upon the poorer sort,
as to occasion insufferable clamours; and they, whose proper
business it was to contrive these matters better have been so
unskilful, that the legislative power has been more than once
compelled for the peoples' ease to give new funds, instead of others
that had been ill projected.
This may be generally said, that all duties whatsoever upon the
consumption of a large produce, fall with the greatest weight upon
the common sort, so that such as think in new duties that they
chiefly tax the rich will find themselves quite mistaken; for either
their fund must yield little, or it must arise from the whole body
of the people, of which the richer sort are but a small proportion.
And though war, and national debts and engagements, might heretofore
very rationally plead for excises upon our home consumption, yet now
there is a peace, it is the concern of every man that loves his
country to proceed warily in laying new ones, and to get off those
which are already laid as fast as ever he can. High customs and
high excises both together are incompatible, either of them alone
are to be endured, but to have them co-exist is suffered in no well-
governed nation.
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