ch is sometimes attended with great loss, and always with
inconvenience? If this had been done, how many law-suits, how many
nefarious tricks, would have been prevented? But not to speak of those
inconveniences only, how much useless trouble, uneasiness, and
uncertainty, would have been saved in the common way of transacting
business? In most cases, the subject is treated as if neither his time,
nor his conveniency, nor his feelings, were worth attending to. This is
equally impolitic and unjust: there is, perhaps, no country where
people are more careful to keep within the pale of the law, than in
England; but when they are within it, and have power, no people use it
with a more insulting rigour; and for this there is no redress.

In many cases, this would be entirely prevented by proper attention in
first laying on the tax. There should be a board of taxation, to receive,
digest, and examine, the suggestions of others. In short, pains should
be taken to bring to perfection the system. At present, it is left to
chance; that is to say, it is left for those to do who have not time to do
it, and, of consequence, the blunders committed are seen by all the
world. {212}

---
{212} An act of parliament for a new tax is seldom ever right till it
has been evaded a number of times, and even then in perfectioning
=sic= it, an increase of revenue is the only object attended to; the
conveniency of the subject is scarcely ever thought of. Taxes are laid
on, that experience proves to be unproductive and oppressive, and
sometimes are, and oftener ought, to be repealed; thousands of persons
are sometimes ruined for a mere experiment. As the public pays for it,
they, at least, might be indulged with a little attention; nothing costs
less than civility. If half the attention were paid to preventing
unnecessary trouble to the subject, [end of page #278] in cases of
taxation, that is paid to the preservation of partridges, we should have
the thing very differently managed. There should also be a public
office, to hear just complaints against those who give unnecessary
trouble, as there is for hackney coachmen. Men in all situations
require to be under some controul, where they have power. Most of
those who _drive_ others, go wrong sometimes, unless held in check
by some authority.
-=-

The encroachments of separate bodies on the public, it is entirely in
the power of the state to prevent. It is owing to weakness or
carelessness, or ign