To those
who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of
interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect, in any form,
an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbors, must appear not
less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured
party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient
channels for their foreign trade. But the mild voice of reason, pleading
the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often
drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of
an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
The necessity of a superintending authority over the reciprocal trade of
confederated States, has been illustrated by other examples as well as
our own. In Switzerland, where the Union is so very slight, each canton
is obliged to allow to merchandises a passage through its jurisdiction
into other cantons, without an augmentation of the tolls. In Germany it
is a law of the empire, that the princes and states shall not lay tolls
or customs on bridges, rivers, or passages, without the consent of the
emperor and the diet; though it appears from a quotation in an
antecedent paper, that the practice in this, as in many other instances
in that confederacy, has not followed the law, and has produced there
the mischiefs which have been foreseen here.
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