INDIRECT TAXATION. 1 57 



decided it should not follow, viz. : '* Seek with success a 

 competency from our cheap and fertile soil." ' Thus a 

 century ago the first blow at American agriculture was 

 given. 



Practically, America's indirect-taxation system is just a 

 century old. The modest proportions of the monster's 

 early days seem almost ridiculous compared with its 

 present huge development. The United States customs 

 tariff of 1789, equivalent to an advalore??i rate of 8| per 

 cent, as a temporary expedient, has grown to a vicious 

 tax of above 40 per cent. Canada is marching in the 

 same direction, and at a rate quite as rapid. 



To-day the evasions and perversions of the customs 

 laws involve sums in terms of money not far behind the 

 total-revenue considerations of a hundred years ago, to 

 say little of the more important matter of the moral 

 effects on the parties immediately in contact with the 

 operations of the law. It is well, perhaps, for the peace 

 of the spirits of those worthy gentlemen who in 1789 

 protested against an 8^ per cent, tariff, because of the 

 temptation it would offer to the breaking of law and 

 endangering the morals of the people, that they are 

 probably ignorant of the fact, that here in America, 

 within a century, under the fostering influence of the 

 system then introduced, smuggling has become a fine 

 art. 



The history of our indirect taxation is an interesting 

 study. From it we learn how it is possible for a people 

 to become gradually and unconsciously enslaved, the 

 power of the people to govern themselves to be snatched 

 away, and the safety of our civilization brought into 

 peril. Even away back in the days of the Romans, im- 



' Fisher Ames. 



