date

6 Jan 1807 C + Facienda
6 Jan 1807

C +

Facienda

Outline

(After Appeal to Jury?)

Law - taxes by statute to be abolished

Abolition of all taxes on justice, whether in the shape of stamp-duties or any other shape: Justice [...?] and unprohibited in the here proposed all-embracing as in the already existing Courts of Natural Procedure transfer of this part of the public burthens to the taxes on instruments of conveyance, to the taxes on saucepans, to the assessed taxes, to the property tax, or to any other tax whatsoever. All other taxes fall if not upon affluence, at any rate upon possession: this alone falls upon affluence and indigence: aggravating affliction and shutting the door against relief. In principle it stands next in depravity to the taxes on medicine: but in practice and effect it is beyond comparison worse: viz: by reason of its enormous magnitude and inequality and the abuse of relief /all these claims[?] of relief will[?] [...?] the[?] [...?]/ is so happily encompassed[?]. Lingering death, would any eye that orders it choose to see it is among its abundant consequences.

Power to the Judge to impose a contribution, call it tax call it fine, upon the party in the wrong - lighter in case of temerity, heavy in case of male fides - proportioned to his income. But when thus rightly scaled and duly /accurately/ proportioned, the danger is - such are the delusions spread over the public mind by the technical system - that the Judge would be reluctant to exercise the power the people perhaps the lawyers certainly averse[?] to the exercise of it /unwilling to see it exercised[?]. While /Pour it out/ falling without / governed[?] out/ distraction upon the oppressor and the oppressed, it forms in the hands of the tyrant the principal instrument in the exercise of his tyranny, which in a word its operation is all pure evil, no pen[?] but one at least, are[?] that equal /equivalent/ to none, has ever been raised against it - but one legislator among so many, cares how frequently or how barbarously it is aggravated. Place it in such a manner as that it shall serve as a bridle to oppression, protecting the indigent from oppression punishing the oppressor, when its operation is all pure good, then and then only it is that men are prepared to complain of rigour, and protest against it as a grievance. Inexplicable blindness, or cold and calculating /interested/ barbarity - when will it relent? when will it cease?
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