been represented, and that our resources are fully equal
to the pressure.

The perfection of government depends on the equality of its operation, as
far as human affairs will admit, upon all parts of the empire, and upon
all the citizens. Some inequalities indeed will necessarily take place.
One man will be obliged to travel a few miles further than another man to
procure justice. But when he has travelled, the poor man ought to have the
same measure of justice as the rich one. Small enqualities [sic] may be
easily compensated. There ought, however, to be no inequality in the law
itself, and the government ought to have the same authority in one place
as in another. Evident as this truth is, the most plausible argument in
favour of the new plan is drawn from the inequality of its operation in
different states. In Connecticut, they have been told that the bulk of the
revenue will be raised by impost and excise, and, therefore, they need not
be afraid to trust Congress with the power of levying a dry tax at
pleasure. New York and Massachusetts are both more commercial states than
Connecticut. The latter, therefore, hopes that the other two will pay the
bulk of the continental expense. The argument is, in itself, delusive. If
the trade is not over-taxed, the consumer pays it. If the trade is
over-taxed, it languishes, and by the ruin of trade the farmer loses his
market. The farmer has, in truth, no other advantage from imposts than
that they save him the trouble of collecting money for the government. He
neither gets nor loses money by changing the mode of taxation. The
government indeed finds it the easiest way to raise the revenue; and the
reason is that the tax is by this means collected where the money
circulates most freely. But if the argument was not delusive, it ought to
conclude against the plan, because it would prove the unequal operation of
it; and if any saving is to be made by the mode of taxing, the saving
should be applied towards our own debt, and not to the payment of that
part of the continental burden which Connecticut ought to discharge. It
would be impossible to refute in writing all the delusions made use of to
force this system through. Those respecting the publick debt, and the
benefit of imposts, are the most important, and these I have taken pains
to explain. In one instance, indeed, the impost does raise money at the
direct expense of the seaports. This is when goods are imported subject to
a d