the bare-faced iniquities that are committed. {99} The ship-
money, the poll-tax, the taxes on the Americans, and others, that have
caused so much bloodshed and strife, never amounted to one-tenth, if
all added together, of what the English public pays to be applied to
maintain the poor, and administered by rude illiterate men, who render
scarcely any account, and certainly, in general, evade all regular
control. Those administrators, though chosen by the people, always,
while in office, imbibe _l'esprit du corps_, and make a common
cause.

---
{99} In Brabant and Flanders the people were very jealous of their
liberties. They were, however, most terribly oppressed by the
churchmen and lawyers.
-=-

[end of page #122]

The repairs of highways, bridges, streets, and expenses of police in
general; whatever falls on parishes, towns, or counties, in the form of
a tax or rate, is generally ill-administered, and the wastefulness
increases with wealth. The difficulty of controling or redressing those
evils proceeds from the same spirit pervading all the separate
administrations. Government alone can remedy this; and it is both the
interest and duty of the government to keep a strict watch over every
body of men that has an interest separate from that of the public at
large. Similar to the human body, which becomes stiff and rigid with
age, so, as states get older, regulation upon regulation, and
encroachment on encroachment, add friction and difficulty to the
machine, till its force is overcome, and the motion stops. In the human
body, if no violent disease intervenes, age occasions death. In the
body politic, if no accidental event comes to accelerate the effect, it
brings on a revolution; hence, as a nation never dies, it throws off the
old grievances, and begins a new career.

The tendency that all laws and regulations have to become more
complicated, and that all bodies, united by one common interest, have
to encroach on the general weal, are known from the earliest periods;
but we have no occasion to go back to early periods for a proof of that
in this country. As wealth increases, the temptation augments, and the
resistance decreases. The wealthy part of society are scarcely pressed
upon by the evils, and they love ease too well to trouble themselves
with fighting the battles of the public. Those who are engaged in trade
are too much occupied to spare time; and, if they were not, they
neither in general know how to