a perpetual immunity from all
taxation, we could not necessarily infer their political happiness.
There are nations where taxation is hardly known, for the people exist
in such utter wretchedness, that they are too poor to be taxed; of which
the Chinese, among others, exhibit remarkable instances. When Nero would
have abolished all taxes, in his excessive passion for popularity, the
senate thanked him for his good will to the people, but assured him that
this was a certain means not of repairing, but of ruining the
commonwealth. Bodin, in his curious work "The Republic," has noticed a
class of politicians who are in too great favour with the people. "Many
seditious citizens, and desirous of innovations, did of late years
promise immunity of taxes and subsidies to our people; but neither could
they do it, or if they could have done it, they would not; or if it were
done, should we have any commonweal, being the ground and foundation of
one."[124]

The undisguised and naked term of "taxation" is, however, so odious to
the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by
governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some
mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles,
they probably would have yielded to the mother-country _the right of_
_taxation_, modified by the term _regulation_ (of their trade); this I
infer from a letter of Dr. Robertson, who observes, that "the
distinction between _taxation_ and _regulation_ is mere folly!" Even
despotic governments have condescended to disguise the contributions
forcibly levied, by some appellative which should partly conceal its
real nature. Terms have often influenced circumstances, as names do
things; and conquest or oppression, which we may allow to be synonymes,
apes benevolence whenever it claims as a gift what it exacts as a
tribute.

A sort of philosophical history of taxation appears in the narrative of
Wood, in his "Inquiry on Homer." He tells us that "the presents (a term
of extensive signification in the East) which are distributed annually
by the bashaw of Damascus to the several Arab princes through whose
territory he conducts the caravan of pilgrims to Mecca, are, at
Constantinople, called a free gift, and considered as an act of the
sultan's generosity towards his indigent subjects; while, on the other
hand, the Arab Sheikhs deny even a right of passage through the
districts of their command, and exact those s