Happy it is when the interest which the
government has in the preservation of its own power, coincides with a
proper distribution of the public burdens, and tends to guard the least
wealthy part of the community from oppression!
As to poll taxes, I, without scruple, confess my disapprobation of them;
and though they have prevailed from an early period in those States[1]
which have uniformly been the most tenacious of their rights, I should
lament to see them introduced into practice under the national
government. But does it follow because there is a power to lay them that
they will actually be laid? Every State in the Union has power to impose
taxes of this kind; and yet in several of them they are unknown in
practice. Are the State governments to be stigmatized as tyrannies,
because they possess this power? If they are not, with what propriety
can the like power justify such a charge against the national
government, or even be urged as an obstacle to its adoption? As little
friendly as I am to the species of imposition, I still feel a thorough
conviction that the power of having recourse to it ought to exist in the
federal government.
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