1820 Aug. 20

Emancipation Spanish

Letter 5. Under Code

' Deputation [...?] tax

Tobacco

But if in Spanish America, such would be the indignation called forth by a tax on

Tobacco, not inferior /less violent/ surely is the indignation reasonably to be

expected to be called forth by any /in that same/ other tax, the effect of which

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

amount.

If in Spain the indignation had for its cause the particular mode in which the tax is levied, considered in comparison of some less

grievous mode in which it might be levied, which 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, or

in the case of the General Government of the Anglo-American United States, in the

case of the Spanish government taxes upon imports above, 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 the consumers of luxuries: a tax which therefore diew no extend to

the least opulent, not 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

calsses. But tobacco is not a necessary of life: whereas salt and abundance of the

articles in which the alcavalo falis[?], are regarded as necessaries.

But 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 a tax on tobacco imposed for their own use, the people of

Spanish America will not (I say) submitt to a tax on tobacco or any thing else

imposed for the use of the people of Spain.

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 in tax imposed by that Parliament for the use of the people of England: and

hence it was that to Anglo-American subjection was substituted Anglo-American

independence.