representations, and to impute the publick calamities
rather to any other cause than their own misconduct. It is every where
equally their practice to oppress and obscure those who owe their
greatness to their virtue or abilities, because they can never be
reduced to blind obedience, or taught to be creatures of the ministry,
because men who can discover truth, will sometimes speak it, and because
those are best qualified to deceive others, who can be persuaded that
they are contending for the right.

But it is surely time for this nation to rouse from indolence, and to
resolve to put an end to frauds that have been so long known. It is time
to watch with more vigilance the distribution of the publick treasure,
and to consider rather how to contract the national expenses, than upon
what pretences new offices may be erected, and new dependencies created.
It is time to consider how our debts may be lessened, and by what
expedients our taxes may be diminished.

Our taxes, sir, are such, at present, as perhaps no nation was ever
loaded with before, such as never were paid to raise forces against an
invader, or imposed by the insolence of victory upon a conquered people.
Every gentleman pays to the government more than two thirds of his
estate, by various exactions.--This assertion is received, I see, with
surprise, by some, whose ample patrimonies have exempted them from the
necessity of nice computations, and with an affected appearance of
contempt by others, who, instead of paying taxes, may be said to receive
them, and whose interest it is to keep the nation ignorant of the causes
of its misery, and to extenuate those calamities by which themselves are
enriched.

But, sir, to endeavour to confute demonstration by a grin, or to laugh
away the deductions of arithmetick, is, surely, such a degree of
effrontery, as nothing but a post of profit can produce; nor is it for
the sake of these men, that I shall endeavour to elucidate my assertion;
for they cannot but be well informed of the state of our taxes, whose
chief employment is to receive and to squander the money which arises
from them.

It is frequent, sir, among gentlemen, to mistake the amount of the taxes
which are laid upon the nation, by passing over, in their estimates, all
those which are not paid immediately out of the visible rents of their
lands, and imagining that they are in no degree interested in the
imposts upon manufactures or other commodities. They