The slow
operation of taxes, owing to the extensiveness of collection, and
their depreciated value before they arrived in the treasury, have,
in many instances, thrown a burden upon government, which has been
artfully interpreted by the enemy into a general decline throughout
the country. Yet this, inconvenient as it may at first appear, is
not only remediable, but may be turned to an immediate advantage;
for it makes no real difference, whether a certain number of men, or
company of militia (and in this country every man is a militia-man),
are directed by law to send a recruit at their own expense, or whether
a tax is laid on them for that purpose, and the man hired by
government afterwards. The first, if there is any difference, is
both cheapest and best, because it saves the expense which would
attend collecting it as a tax, and brings the man sooner into the
field than the modes of recruiting formerly used; and, on this
principle, a law has been passed in this state, for recruiting two men
from each company of militia, which will add upwards of a thousand
to the force of the country.
But the flame which has broken forth in this city since the report
from New York, of the loss of Charleston, not only does honor to the
place, but, like the blaze of 1776, will kindle into action the
scattered sparks throughout America. The valor of a country may be
learned by the bravery of its soldiery, and the general cast of its
inhabitants, but confidence of success is best discovered by the
active measures pursued by men of property; and when the spirit of
enterprise becomes so universal as to act at once on all ranks of men,
a war may then, and not till then, be styled truly popular.
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