d; new methods to enforce the
collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has been
uniformly disappointed, and the treasuries of the States have remained
empty. The popular system of administration inherent in the nature of
popular government, coinciding with the real scarcity of money incident
to a languid and mutilated state of trade, has hitherto defeated every
experiment for extensive collections, and has at length taught the
different legislatures the folly of attempting them.

No person acquainted with what happens in other countries will be
surprised at this circumstance. In so opulent a nation as that of
Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much more
tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more practicable,
than in America, far the greatest part of the national revenue is
derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from
excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch of this latter
description.

In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means
of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must
be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill
brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets
of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty
supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and
lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to
be laid hold of in any other way than by the imperceptible agency of
taxes on consumption.

If these remarks have any foundation, that state of things which will
best enable us to improve and extend so valuable a resource must be
best adapted to our political welfare. And it cannot admit of a serious
doubt, that this state of things must rest on the basis of a general
Union. As far as this would be conducive to the interests of commerce,
so far it must tend to the extension of the revenue to be drawn from
that source. As far as it would contribute to rendering regulations for
the collection of the duties more simple and efficacious, so far it
must serve to answer the purposes of making the same rate of duties
more productive, and of putting it into the power of the government to
increase the rate without prejudice to trade.

The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which
they are intersected, and of bays that wash there shores; the facil