“Why, yes,” said Hastings, “the true intent of accumulating wealth in churches, is to advance religion; for what other purposes are the funds created? I used to smile when I saw the amazing liberality of the trustees of this immense fund; they would, in the most freezing and pompous manner, dole out a thousand dollars to this church, and a thousand to that, making them all understand that nothing more could be done, as they were fearful, even in doing this, that they had gone beyond their charter.”
“Just as if they did not know,” said Edgar, “that any set of men, in any legislature, would give them full powers to expend the whole income in the cause of their own peculiar religion. Why I cannot tell how many years were suffered to elapse before they raised what was called a Bishop’s Fund, and you know better than I do, how it was raised, or rather, how it commenced. And the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, states, that the fund for the support of decayed clergymen and their families, was raised by the poor clergymen themselves. Never were people so hardly used as these ministers of the Gospel. You were an irreverent, exacting race in your day; you expected more from a preacher than from any other person to whom they gave salaries—they were screwed down to the last thread of the screw; people would have their pennyworth out of them. It is no wonder that you had such poor preachers in your day; why few men of liberal education, aware of all the exactions and disabilities under which the sacred cloth laboured, would ever encounter them. But, now, every village has its own pastor; and some of them are highly gifted men, commanding the attention of the most intelligent people. The little churches are filled, throughout the summer, with such of the gentry of the cities who can afford to spend a few months in the country during the warm weather. No one, however, has the indecency or the unfeelingness to covet this preacher for their own church in the city. They do not attempt to bribe him away, but leave him there, satisfied that the poor people who take such delight in administering to his wants and his comforts, should have the benefit of his piety, his learning and his example. Why, the clergymen, now, are our best horticulturists too. It is to them that we owe the great advancement in this useful art. They even taught, themselves, while at college, and now they encourage their parishioners to cultivate gardens and orchards. Every village, as well as town and city, has a large garden attached to it, in which the children of the poor are taught to work, so that to till the earth and to ‘make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before,’ is now the chief aim of every individual; and we owe this, principally, to our pastors. I can tell you that it is something now to be a country clergyman.”
“But how were funds raised for the purchase of these garden and orchard spots?”
“Why, through the means of the general tax, that which, in your day, would have been called direct tax.”
“Direct tax! Why my dear Edgar, such a thing could never have been tolerated in my time; people would have burnt the man in effigy for only proposing such a thing. It was once or twice attempted, indirectly, and in a very cautious way, but it would not do.”
“Yes—direct tax—I knew you would be startled, for the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states that at the close of Daniel Webster’s administration something of the kind was suggested, but even then, so late as the year 1850, it was violently opposed. But a new state of things gradually paved the way for it, and now we cannot but pity the times when all the poor inhabitants of this free country were taxed so unequally. There is now, but one tax, and each man is made to pay according to the value of his property, or his business, or his labour. A land-holder, a stock-holder and the one who has houses and bonds and mortgages, pays so much per cent, on the advance of his property, and for his annual receipts—the merchant, with a fluctuating capital, pays so much on his book account of sales—the mechanic and labourer, so much on their yearly receipts, for we have no sales on credit now—that demoralizing practice has been abolished for upwards of a century.”
“The merchants, then,” said Hastings, “pay more than any other class of men, for there are the customhouse bonds.”
“Yes,” said Edgar, “I recollect reading in the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries,—you must run your eye over that celebrated newspaper—that all goods imported from foreign ports had to pay duties, as it was called. But every thing now is free to come and go, and as the custom prevails all over the world, there is no hardship to any one. What a demoralizing effect that duty or tariff system produced; why honesty was but a loose term then, and did not apply to every act as it now does. The Recorder was full of the exposures that were yearly occurring, of defrauding the revenue, as it was called. Some of these frauds were to a large amount; and then it was considered as a crime; but when a man smuggled in hats, shoes, coats and other articles of the like nature, he was suffered to go free; such small offences were winked at as if defrauding the revenue of a dollar were not a crime per se as well as defrauding it of a thousand dollars—just as if murdering an infant were not as much murder as if the life had been taken from a man—just as if killing a man in private, because his enemy had paid you to do it, was not as much murder in the first degree as if the government had paid you for killing a dozen men in battle in open day—just as if”—
“Just as if what?” said the astonished Hastings, “has the time come when killing men by wholesale, in war, is accounted a crime?”
“Yes, thank Heaven,” said Edgar, “that blessed time has at length arrived; it is upwards of one hundred and twenty years since men were ordered to kill one another in that barbarous manner. Why the recital of such cruel and barbarous deeds fills our young children with horror. The ancient policy of referring the disputes of nations to single combat, was far more humanizing than the referring such disputes to ten thousand men on each side; for, after all, it was ‘might that made right.’ Because a strong party beats a weaker one, that is not a proof that the right was in the strong one; yet, still, if men had no other way of settling their disputes but by spilling blood, then that plan was the most humane which only sacrificed two or one man. As to national honour! why not let the few settle it? why drag the poor sailors and soldiers to be butchered like cattle to gratify the fine feelings of a few morbidly constructed minds?”