ed upon
every article of merchandise or personal-property, to be paid as often as
it should be sold. This tax was likewise to be perpetual.

The consternation in the assembly when these enormous propositions were
heard, can be easily imagined. People may differ about religious dogmas.
In the most bigoted persecutions there will always be many who, from
conscientious although misguided motives, heartily espouse the cause of
the bigot. Moreover, although resistance to tyranny in matters of faith,
is always the most ardent of struggles, and is supported by the most
sublime principle in our nature, yet all men are not of the sterner stuff
of which martyrs are fashioned. In questions relating to the world above;
many may be seduced from their convictions by interest, or forced into
apostasy by violence. Human nature is often malleable or fusible, where
religious interests are concerned, but in affairs material and financial
opposition to tyranny is apt to be unanimous.

The interests of commerce and manufacture, when brought into conflict
with those of religion, had often proved victorious in the Netherlands.
This new measure, however--this arbitrary and most prodigious system of
taxation, struck home to every fireside. No individual, however adroit or
time-serving, could parry the blow by which all were crushed.

It was most unanswerably maintained in the assembly, that this tenth and
twentieth penny would utterly destroy the trade and the manufactures of
the country. The hundredth penny, or the one per cent. assessment on all
property throughout the land, although a severe subsidy, might be borne
with for once. To pay, however, a twentieth part of the full value of a
house to the government as often as the house was sold, was a most
intolerable imposition. A house might be sold twenty times in a year, and
in the course, therefore, of the year be confiscated in its whole value.
It amounted either to a prohibition of all transfers of real estate, or
to an eventual surrender of its price.

As to the tenth penny upon articles of merchandise, to be paid by the
vendor at every sale, the scheme was monstrous. All trade and
manufactures must, of necessity, expire, at the very first attempt to put
it in execution. The same article might be sold ten times in a week, and
might therefore pay one hundred per cent. weekly. An article, moreover,
was frequently compounded of ten, different articles, each of which might
pay one hundred