Quote of the Week |
|
Thomas Jefferson on taxes
|
|
|
In his first annual meesage to Congress
in 1801, President Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) disccused how the tax burden could be reduced
and warned how "accumulated treasure" could tempt regimes to go
to war in the future:
War, indeed, and untoward events, may change this prospect of things,
and call for expenses which the imposts could not meet; but sound principles
will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate
treasure for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not perhaps
happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure. These views,
however, of reducing our burdens, are formed on the expectation that a
sensible, and at the same time a salutary reduction, may take place in
our habitual expenditures. For this purpose, those of the civil government,
the army, and navy, will need revisal.
[See the fullquote
and previous quotes of the week.]
[See our collections
on The
American Revolution & Constitution and the Founding
Fathers.]
|
The full paragraph from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
I lay before you the result of the census lately taken of our inhabitants,
to a conformity with which we are to reduce the ensuing rates of representation
and taxation. You will perceive that the increase of numbers during the last
ten years, proceeding in geometrical ratio, promises a duplication in little
more than twenty-two years. We contemplate this rapid growth, and the prospect
it holds up to us, not with a view to the injuries it may enable us to do
to others in some future day, but to the settlement of the extensive country
still remaining vacant within our limits, to the multiplications of men susceptible
of happiness, educated in the love of order, habituated to self-government,
and value its blessings above all price.
Other circumstances, combined with the increase of numbers, have produced
an augmentation of revenue arising from consumption, in a ratio far beyond
that of population alone, and though the changes of foreign relations now
taking place so desirably for the world, may for a season affect this branch
of revenue, yet, weighing all probabilities of expense, as well as of income,
there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now safely dispense
with all the internal taxes, comprehending excises, stamps, auctions, licenses,
carriages, and refined sugars, to which the postage on newspapers may be
added, to facilitate the progress of information, and that the remaining
sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for the support of government
to pay the interest on the public debts, and to discharge the principals
in shorter periods than the laws or the general expectations had contemplated. War,
indeed, and untoward events, may change this prospect of things, and call
for expenses which the imposts could not meet; but sound principles will
not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate
treasure for wars to happen we know not when, and which might not perhaps
happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure.
These views, however, of reducing our burdens, are formed on the
expectation that a sensible, and at the same time a salutary reduction,
may take place in our habitual expenditures. For this purpose, those
of the civil government, the army, and navy, will need revisal.
|
Archive 
