1820. Aug. 18.

Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria

Letter 4. Under Code profit none

' 3. Creoles Unwilling

for defraying the charges of maintaining government in Spain. In Spanish America, or

any part of that country, should any such indignation chance to be kindled, is it

likely to be much softened by the consideration that the money, or any part of it,

instead of being employed in defraying the expence of the province from which it is

extracted, is to be employed in paying the salaries of rulers sitting to govern

Spanish America in Spain?

But, if, in Spain itself such would be the indignation called forth by a tax on

Tobacco, not less decided surely is the indignation reasonably to be expected to be

called forth, in Spanish Ultramaria, by any other tax, the effect of which would be

to extract out of that country into Spain, money to any thing near the same

amount. (a)

Note (a)

True it is that if in Spain it was to the mode only that the indignation applied to

the mode in which the tax is levied, considered in comparison of some grievous mode

in which it might be levied - what I proceed to say of the tax has no application:

but, if the objection was to the subject matter of the tax, an objection to this tax

seems little less than an objection to all taxes whatsoever: unless, as under

favourable circumstances, in the case of the general government of the Anglo-American

United States, so in the case of the Spanish Government, taxes upon imports alone, or

upon imports and exports, were regarded as sufficient. Spain, having, within herself,

the necessaries of life, a tax imposed there upon imports, is a tax upon no goods but

luxuries, and upon no consumers but the consumers of luxuries: a tax which,

therefore, does not extend to the least opulent, nor therefore, to the most numerous

classes. A tax upon Tobacco is, it is true, a tax which falls principally upon the

consumption of the least opulent classes. But Tobacco is not a necessary of life:

whereas salt, and abundance of the articles on which the alcavala falls, are regarded

as necessaries of life.

The question - never for a moment be it out of mind on this occasion, the question

is - not as to what the tax is in itself, but as to the disposition of the people to

submitt to it. Whether the people of Spain will or will not submitt to the tax in

question imposed upon them for their own use, the people of Spanish Ultramarian Spain

will not (I say) submitt to it, or to any other tax, if in the whole or any part of

it they regarded it as being imposed for the use of you the people of Peninsular

Spain or your rulers.

The people of English America, though, from the beginning, living in uninterrupted

subjection to the Parliament of England, would not submitt to a tax of threepence a

pound on tea, imposed by that Parliament for the use of the people of England though

the article is a mere luxury, and the use of it so modern in its commencement and

hence it was that, to Anglo-American subjection, after a struggle at the end of which

the power of England yielded was substituted Anglo-American independence: to a good

government growing every day better and better, a bad government growing every day

worse and worse