proposing such a thing. It was once or twice attempted, indirectly, and in a very cautious way, but it would not do."
"Yes—direct tax—I knew you would be startled, for the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states that at the close of Daniel Webster's administration something of the kind was suggested, but even then, so late as the year 1850, it was violently opposed. But a new state of things gradually paved the way for it, and now we cannot but pity the times when all the poor inhabitants of this free country were taxed so unequally. There is now, but one tax, and each man is made to pay according to the value of his property, or his business, or his labour. A land-holder, a stock-holder and the one who has houses and bonds and mortgages, pays so much per cent, on the advance of his property, and for his annual receipts—the merchant, with a fluctuating capital, pays so much on his book account of sales—the mechanic and labourer, so much on their yearly receipts, for we have no sales on credit now—that demoralizing practice has been abolished for upwards of a century."
"The merchants, then," said Hastings, "pay more than any other class of men, for there are the customhouse bonds."
"Yes," said Edgar, "I recollect reading in the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries,—you must run your eye over that celebrated newspaper—that all goods imported from foreign ports had to pay duties, as it was called. But every thing now is free to come and go, and as the custom prevails all over the world, there is no hardship to any one. What a demoralizing effect that duty or tariff system produced; why honesty was but a loose term then, and did not apply to every act as it now does. The Recorder was full of the exposures that were yearly occurring, of defrauding the revenue, as it was call-
