e his heart will be
also." For these reasons, and on these principles, I have been sorry to
see the attempts which have been made, with more good meaning than
foresight and consideration, towards raising the annual interest of this
loan by private contributions. Wherever a regular revenue is
established, there voluntary contribution can answer no purpose but to
disorder and disturb it in its course. To recur to such aids is, for so
much, to dissolve the community, and to return to a state of unconnected
Nature. And even if such a supply should be productive in a degree
commensurate to its object, it must also be productive of much vexation
and much oppression. Either the citizens by the proposed duties pay
their proportion according to some rate made by public authority, or
they do not. If the law be well made, and the contributions founded on
just proportions, everything superadded by something that is not as
regular as law, and as uniform in its operation, will become more or
less out of proportion. If, on the contrary, the law be not made upon
proper calculation, it is a disgrace to the public; wisdom, which fails
in skill to assess the citizen in just measure and according to his
means. But the hand of authority is not always the most heavy hand. It
is obvious that men may be oppressed by many ways besides those which
take their course from the supreme power of the state. Suppose the
payment to be wholly discretionary. Whatever has its origin in caprice
is sure not to improve in its progress, nor to end in reason. It is
impossible for each private individual to have any measure conformable
to the particular condition of each of his fellow-citizens, or to the
general exigencies of his country. 'Tis a random shot at best.

When men proceed in this irregular mode, the first contributor is apt to
grow peevish with his neighbors. He is but too well disposed to measure
their means by his own envy, and not by the real state of their
fortunes, which he can rarely know, and which it may in them be an act
of the grossest imprudence to reveal. Hence the odium and lassitude with
which people will look upon a provision for the public which is bought
by discord at the expense of social quiet. Hence the bitter
heart-burnings, and the war of tongues, which is so often the prelude to
other wars. Nor is it every contribution, called voluntary, which is
according to the free will of the giver. A false shame, or a false
glory, against