Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/161

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

( 151 )

you have been giving me of your country during your late war, and if you understood Latin I would say to you—

De te fabula narratur.

"The true way of estimating the disastrous consequences of your present taxation, is to figure to yourself (if you can bear the reflection) the sensation it would at this moment produce, if some new and unexpected source of annual revenue were to start up to the amount of twenty millions of your money.—Would it not in your present condition be like a resurrection from the dead?—Yet in this one reign you have created a perpetual burthen of nearly twice that sum. Could volumes so strikingly detail the effect of this worst of evils?

"The cause of your distress is therefore the clearest imaginable.—Your government collects in taxes so large a proportion of your property, that the rest is not sufficient to support your people; in such a case it is a mistake to com-

l4
plain