on trade, and by direct taxes.

While these measures were depending before congress, memorials and
resolutions against them were presented by the manufacturers, which
were expressed in terms of disrespect that evidenced the sense in
which numbers understood the doctrine, _that the people were
sovereign, and those who administered the government, their servants_.
This opportunity for charging the government with tyranny and
oppression, with partiality and injustice, was too favourable not to
be embraced by the democratic societies, those self proclaimed
watchful sentinels over the rights of the people. A person
unacquainted with those motives which, in the struggle of party, too
often influence the conduct of men, would have supposed a direct tax
to be not only in itself more eligible, but to be more acceptable to
the community than those which were proposed. To the more judicious
observers of the springs of human action, the reverse was known to be
the fact.

[Illustration: George Washington's Bedroom at Mount Vernon

_It was in this room that Washington expired, December 14, 1799. Two
days previously he was exposed in the saddle, for several hours, to
cold and snow, and contracted acute laryngitis for which he was
ineffectually treated in the primitive manner of the period. A short
time before ceasing to breathe, he said: "I die hard; but I am not
afraid to go. I believed from my first attack that I should not
survive it. My breath cannot last long." A little later he murmured:
"I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you
to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last
long." After giving some instructions about his burial he became
easier, felt his own pulse, and died without a struggle._]

The friends of the administration supported the proposed system
against every objection to it, because they believed it to be more
productive, and less unpopular, than a direct tax. It is not
impossible that what recommended the system to one party, might
constitute a real objection to it with those who believed that the
public interest required a change[21] in the public councils.

[Footnote 21: The declaration was not unfrequently made that
the people could only be roused to a proper attention to the
violation of their rights, and to the prodigal waste of
their money, by perceiving the weight of their taxes. This
was concealed from them by the indirec