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No rapid disturbance of our present social system, how- 
ever faulty in its working, seems likely to lead to any 
permanent good — nor can any such come from touching the 
rights of property or of men, as both are now secured by 
the laws. And yet we may work wonders by a radical 
change of our fiscal system, whereby the moral and intel- 
lectual status of the people, of all classes, would be raised 
to a standard far above what can be hoped for under our 
present faulty and unjust system. 
The wealth and power of the nation would also be greatly 
enhanced by the change I would humbly suggest. It 
would be, indeed, to carry out our own principles of free 
trade to their legitimate end. We formerly suffered so 
much from the impediments to industry and employment of 
capital by heavy imposts on so many articles of consump- 
tion, and have since witnessed the benefits that followed 
the removal of a large portion of such hindrances to the 
public welfare, and opened such wide fields for native 
industry and commercial enterprise, that we might take 
courage to march onward in the same beneficent paths, and 
remove, at once , all remaining imposts upon all articles of 
consumption in the shape of Import and Excise Duties. 
Free trade principles , so widely proclaimed as both 
politic and just, are ignored in practice by the heavy 
imposts on some half-a-dozen of the most general and 
important articles of consumption, and on which is raised 
five-sixths of the public revenue. To allow these articles 
to reach the consumer untaxed, on free trade principles, 
would be in accord with the avowal of their justice and 
sound policy, but this would leave a wide blank in the 
Exchequer ; still, as the removal of these clogs on labour 
and enterprise would greatly promote the welfare of all 
classes, that view might elicit firmness of purpose enough — 
in men known to possess both moral and mental courage — • 
to face the question, and propose the only fair and efficient 
substitute for those mischievous imposts. 
