be accomplished, and economy and honesty secured in the administration of public money. In this connexion we quote the following passage, from perhaps the best writer in America, (Dr. Channing) upon a subject becoming daily of greater and more pressing importance.
"We should rejoice," says the Christian Examiner for May, 1829, "if by some great improvement in finance, every custom-house could be shut from Maine to Louisiana. The interest of human nature requires, that every fetter should be broken from the intercourse of nations, and that the most distant countries should exchange all their products, whether of manual, or intellectual labor, as freely as members of the same community. An unrestricted commerce we regard as the most important means of diffusing through the world, knowledge, arts, comforts, civilization, religion, and liberty; and to this great cause we would have our country devoted. We will add, that we attach no importance to what is deemed the chief benefit of tariffs, that they save the necessity of direct taxation, and draw from the people a large revenue without their knowledge. In the first place we say that a free people ought to know what they have to pay for freedom, and pay it joyfully; and that they should as truly scorn to be cheated into the support of their government, as into the support of their children. In the next place, a large revenue is no blessing. An over-flowing treasury will always be corrupting to the governors, and the governed. A revenue rigorously proportioned to the wants of a people, is as much as can safely be trusted to men in power. The only valid argument against substituting direct for indirect taxation, is the difficulty of ascertaining with precision the property of the citizen. Happy would it be for us if tariff's could be done away!—for with them would be abolished fruitful causes of national jealousies, of war, of perjury, of wranglings, of innumerable frauds and crimes, and of harassing restraints on that commerce which should be as free as the wind!"
In the great financial reform about to take place in our federal system, it should be kept in mind that our general government, properly administered, requires an annual income of but ten millions of dollars. The public debt being paid off, what is to be done with the public lands? The only remaining use for them is that to which they were dedicated by the original grant from the old states—the support of the government—already they yield three millions and a half annually, and with
