ge of local details, how is it acquired? No doubt from the
information of the members of the county. Cannot the like knowledge be
obtained in the national legislature from the representatives of each
State? And is it not to be presumed that the men who will generally be
sent there will be possessed of the necessary degree of intelligence
to be able to communicate that information? Is the knowledge of
local circumstances, as applied to taxation, a minute topographical
acquaintance with all the mountains, rivers, streams, highways,
and bypaths in each State; or is it a general acquaintance with its
situation and resources, with the state of its agriculture, commerce,
manufactures, with the nature of its products and consumptions, with the
different degrees and kinds of its wealth, property, and industry?

Nations in general, even under governments of the more popular kind,
usually commit the administration of their finances to single men or
to boards composed of a few individuals, who digest and prepare, in the
first instance, the plans of taxation, which are afterwards passed into
laws by the authority of the sovereign or legislature.

Inquisitive and enlightened statesmen are deemed everywhere best
qualified to make a judicious selection of the objects proper for
revenue; which is a clear indication, as far as the sense of mankind
can have weight in the question, of the species of knowledge of local
circumstances requisite to the purposes of taxation.

The taxes intended to be comprised under the general denomination of
internal taxes may be subdivided into those of the DIRECT and those
of the INDIRECT kind. Though the objection be made to both, yet the
reasoning upon it seems to be confined to the former branch. And indeed,
as to the latter, by which must be understood duties and excises on
articles of consumption, one is at a loss to conceive what can be the
nature of the difficulties apprehended. The knowledge relating to them
must evidently be of a kind that will either be suggested by the nature
of the article itself, or can easily be procured from any well-informed
man, especially of the mercantile class. The circumstances that may
distinguish its situation in one State from its situation in another
must be few, simple, and easy to be comprehended. The principal thing
to be attended to, would be to avoid those articles which had been
previously appropriated to the use of a particular State; and there
could be no