147 
However, it cannot be unfair to any class, thus to set 
forth the equity and the policy of drawing the public 
revenue direct from realised wealth rather than from 
incomes, obtained by the labours of men’s brains and 
muscles, or from taxes on the articles consumed by those 
labourers. 
It is neither possible nor desirable to bring about an 
equal division of wealth : the diversity of genius, of talents, 
and of fortune, will determine the production and and dis- 
tribution of wealth, for the most part, in accordance with 
the merits of the several classes in society, except when 
thwarted by such extreme disparities, as have unhappily 
grown up, under very defective fiscal systems. 
It has been placed beyond all question that such extreme 
disparity of wealth has already vitiated, to a deplorable 
extent, the foundations of moral feelings and of political 
justice, — thereby endangering the common welfare, and 
showing it to be the duty of wise and prudent statesmen to 
adopt such measures as will effectually guard the nation 
from a crisis that seems to be lowering in the distance ; and 
this too before we. are quite blinded by the lurid and 
dazzling lights around us. We should try to discern the 
future by looking to the past. From having followed this 
rule during the last seventy years, I am led to fear the 
continually growing powers of wealth, concentrated and 
working as already set forth ; and therefore I desire to let 
my humble voice be heard on what appears the most 
momentous question of the present age, in the hope that 
some check at least may be devised for the mischievous 
abuses of wealth, and the consequent impediments to its 
creation by the productive classes. These warnings come 
from strong convictions of their being called for by the acts 
stated, and not as the ghosts of a teeming imagination ; so 
let them be dealt with in earnest by those bound to guard 
the public weal. 
