be surprised at this circumstance. In so opulent a nation as that
of Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much
more tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more
practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the national
revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts,
and from excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch
of this latter description.
In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for
the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it,
excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the
people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of
excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will
reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of
impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too
precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any other way
than by the inperceptible agency of taxes on consumption.
If these remarks have any foundation, that state of things which
will best enable us to improve and extend so valuable a resource
must be best adapted to our political welfare. And it cannot admit
of a serious doubt, that this state of things must rest on the basis
of a general Union. As far as this would be conducive to the
interests of commerce, so far it must tend to the extension of the
revenue to be drawn from that source. As far as it would contribute
to rendering regulations for the collection of the duties more
simple and efficacious, so far it must serve to answer the purposes
of making the same rate of duties more productive, and of putting it
into the power of the government to increase the rate without
prejudice to trade.
The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers
with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash there shores;