ividuals be the principle to apportion the
taxes in each state, and to include in that number women, children and
slaves? The most natural and equitable principle of apportioning taxes
would be in a ratio to their property, and a reasonable impost in a ratio
to their trade; but you are told to look for the reason of these things in
accommodation; but this much-admired principle, when stripped of its
mystery, will in this case appear to be no less than a basis for an odious
poll-tax--the offspring of despotic governments, a thing so detestable that
the state of Maryland, in their bill of rights, declares "that the levying
taxes by the poll is grievous and oppressive, and ought to be abolished."
A poll-tax is at all times oppressive to the poor, and their greatest
misfortune will consist in having more prolific wives than the rich.

In every civilized community, even in those of the most democratic kind,
there are principles which lead to an aristocracy--these are superior
talents, fortunes and public employments. But in free governments the
influence of the two former is resisted by the equality of the laws, and
the latter by the frequency of elections, and the chance that every one
has in sharing in public business; but when this natural and artificial
eminence is assisted by principles interwoven in this government; when the
senate, so important a branch of the legislature, is so far removed from
the people as to have little or no connection with them; when their
duration in office is such as to have the resemblance to perpetuity; when
they are connected with the executive, by the appointment of all officers,
and also to become a judiciary for the trial of officers of their own
appointments; added to all this, when none but men of opulence will hold a
seat, what is there left to resist and repel this host of influence and
power? Will the feeble efforts of the house of representatives, in whom
your security ought to subsist, consisting of about seventy-three, be able
to hold the balance against them, when, from the fewness of members in
this house, the senate will have in their power to poison even a majority
of that body by douceurs of office for themselves or friends? From causes
like this both Montesquieu and Hume have predicted the decline of the
British government into that of an absolute one; but the liberties of this
country, it is probable, if this system is adopted, will be strangled in
their birth; for whenever