The Case of the Sugarcolonies Author:John Collins Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: their intereft! How great their alarm, when they find principles lately advanced in theory, now propagated with a view to be carried into effect, that intimate a... more » purpofe of annulling the fyftem on which our iflands were originally fettled, and by the continuance of which alone they can advantageoufly exift. I mention not, as fuch, the additional duty of fix fhillings per hundred levied on their fugars during the late war. The exigencies of the ftate imperioijfly demanded it; and when it was laid, it was under an aflurance that the duty would fall on the confumer; Lord North, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, having declared that if he thought the additional duty was to arFe6l the planter, he would not confent to its being impofed. The fentiment was liberal, for every tax levied upon a particular defcription of men, who have not the means of indemnifying themfelves by by a repartition of the burthen among their cuftomerscuftomers, is tyrannous. All taxes to be juft, ought to prefs with equal and impartial weight on every member of the community, in. proportion to his ability to fuftain it, of which confumption is one of the grand criterion, otherwife they dege nerate into a fine. The Ihop-tax was improperly affirmed to have that operation and therefore yielded to public clamour after having furvived two feflions of tem- peftuous debate. The opinion of Lord North was confirmed by the event; for the new duty, jho' from the accident of the peace, it refted entirely on the planters during the laft year of the war, has fince been dif- tributed to all the confumers of fugar. It would indeed have been felt mod feverely by the planter, to whom alone the whole burthen would have attached, had not provifion been made in the bilk for the tranfportation of fuch fugars, as were more th...« less