If their will complies with their
obligation, the great end is answered in the happiest mode; if the will
resists the burden, every one loses a great part of his own will as a
common lot. After all, perhaps, contributions raised by a charge on
luxury, or that degree of convenience which approaches so near as to be
confounded with luxury, is the only mode of contribution which may be
with truth termed voluntary.
I might rest here, and take the loan I speak of as leading to a solution
of that question which I proposed in my first letter: "Whether the
inability of the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a
submission to the indignities and the calamities of a peace with the
Regicide power?" But give me leave to pursue this point a little
further.
I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been
upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification,
that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by
the burdens brought and laid upon the people. But to know where the
burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people. As
to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their
earnings. I deny that the stock of their persons is diminished in a
greater proportion than the common sources of populousness abundantly
fill up: I mean constant employment; proportioned pay according to the
produce of the soil, and, where the soil fails, according to the
operation of the general capital; plentiful nourishment to vigorous
labor; comfortable provision to decrepit age, to orphan infancy, and to
accidental malady.
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