ties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labor, would be able to sell their grain and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and they would thereby reduce their rents and ruin their cultivation. Their rents, however, have risen and their cultivation has been improved since that time.
Specimens of a spirit similar to that which governed the counties here spoken of present themselves too frequently to the eye of an impartial observer, and render it a wish of patriotism that the body in this country in whose councils a local or partial spirit is at least likely to predominate were at liberty to pursue and promote the general interest in those instances in which there might be danger of the interference of such a spirit.
The foregoing are the principal of the means by which the growth of manufactures is ordinarily promoted. It is, however, not merely necessary that the measures of government, which have a direct view to manufactures, should be calculated to assist and protect them, but that those which only collaterally affect them in the general course of the administration should be guarded from any peculiar tendency to injure them.
There are certain species of taxes which are apt to be oppressive to different parts of the community and, among other ill effects have a very unfriendly aspect toward manufactures. All poll or capitation taxes are of this nature. They either proceed according to a fixed rate, which operates unequally and injuriously to the industrious poor, or they vest a discretion in certain officers to make estimates and assessments which are necessarily vague, conjectural, and liable to abuse. They ought, therefore, to be abstained from in all but cases of distressing emergency.
All such taxes (including all taxes on occupations) which proceed according to the amount of capital supposed to be employed in a business, or of profits supposed to be made in it, are unavoidably hurtful to industry. It is in vain that the evil may be endeavored to be mitigated by leaving it, in the first instance, in the option of the party to be taxed to declare the amount of his capital or profits.
Men engaged in any trade or business have commonly weighty reasons to avoid disclosures which would expose with anything like accuracy the real state of their affairs. They most frequently find it better to risk oppression than to avail themselves of so inconvenient a refuge, and the consequence is that they often suffer oppression.
When the disclosure, too, if made, is not definitive, but controllable by the discretion or, in other words, by the passions and prejudices of the revenue officers, it is not only an ineffectual protection, but the possibility of its being so is an additional reason for not resorting to it.
Allowing to the public officers the most equitable dispositions, yet where they are to exercise a discretion without certain data they can not fail to be often misled by appearances. The quantity of business which seems to be going on is in a vast number of cases a very deceitful criterion of the profits which are made; yet it is, perhaps, the best they can have, and it is the one on which they will most naturally rely. A business, therefore, which may rather require aid from the Government than be in a capacity to be contributory to it may find itself crushed by the mistaken conjectures of the assessors of taxes.
Arbitrary taxes, under which denomination are comprised all those that leave the quantum of the tax to be raised on each person to the
