We have lingered on these details, which to many will be dry and uninteresting, because they supply a kind of guide to the changes which must ultimately take place in the tax laws of this country, and because, further, they furnish an answer to all those objections which periodically disturb the minds of the timid and doubtfully patriotic in our midst. But these lessons we must leave the reader to extract for himself. We close simply with saying that, while excessive and undiscriminating taxation is always a curse, yet taxation, properly imposed, although severe and long continued, may be far from disadvantageous. We have seen the English people slowly arising, through two centuries, from a nation comparatively free from taxation and without a national debt, to one bearing an annual tax of three hundred and fifty million dollars, and holding absorbed in its midst a national debt of nearly four thousand million dollars. We have seen it during this period constantly advancing in prosperity and greatness—the national debt adding stability to the Government, and taxation giving caution and stability to the transactions of private life.
APHORISMS.
NO. I.
One of the most sublime of all facts beneath that of the Divine Being, appears in the existence of an immortal soul. There it stands—once for all, once forever. The earth might be wasted away, at the rate of a single grain in a century, without passing the very infancy of our spirit's life. How insignificant, in the comparison, a world like our own, in all its temporal aspects. What the future duration of the earth may be, we have no means of knowing; but if less than endless, it is of little moment in the presence of the least capacious human soul.
THE LOVE LUCIFER.
CHAPTER II.
I find myself writing upon matters connected, at least, with, religion, with the thought of saying something useful—of presenting a valuable experience, if not a valuable congeries of new ideas. Most readers deeply interested in religion are, by this time, demanding that I show my colors—present my creed; otherwise they will shut themselves up from my influence. As I write, church bells are ringing. I know that many of those who now assemble to hang with a deathly solemnity upon the lips of preachers—while death, hell, heaven, eternity, atonement are the themes—will say: 'He treats lightly the most serious matters: he treads with dancing pumps on holy ground.' Now I claim to be, above all things, an earnest, solemn person. Yet do I verily believe that there is a humorous side to all subjects, that is not ignored by even the loftiest beings; and that, in a restricted sense, it may be said of all well-balanced persons, as a philosopher has said of children: 'Because they are in innocence, therefore they are in peace; and because they are in peace, therefore all things are with them full of mirth.' It must be admitted, however, that if the 'orthodox' creed is wholly correct, we find in the Puritans and their existing imitators the only consistent Christians. In view of the inevitable damnation of a majority of the race, they set their faces against all mirth; would eat no pleasant bread, and wear no beautiful raiment. I followed them to the letter, till, the 'naked eye' not being wholly blinded, nor the ear deafened by theologic din, I saw that nature, in all her guises and voices, was firmly opposed to all such gloomy dogmas.