' This blood, however,
was circulating in the mean time through the whole body of the state, and
what was received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out
again at the other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible
injuries of taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in
the known disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular
vessels, by a disproportionate accumulation of blood in them, which
sometimes occurs when the circulation has been suddenly and violently
changed, and causes helplessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the
total quantity of blood remains the same in the system at large.
"But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and
evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface
of the earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass,
and the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the
pasture, and the corn field; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture
from the fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated
swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe
supply, perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance
judiciously conducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the
capital of a nation, and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels
and directions under the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the
dispersion of that capital through the whole population by the joint effect
of taxation and trade.
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