|
|
Contempo-
rary Printed
Pamphlet
Md.Hist.Soc.
p. 32
|
be raised by a "Tax upon all Ferriages, a Tax upon all Pilots, a Tax
upon all Taxables, with an additional Tax upon Negroe Taxables, a
Tax of a certain Sum on Land by the Hundred, a Tax upon all lucra-
tive Offices and Places of Profit, Benefices and Professions, a Tax
upon all the Proprietary Manors, reserved and leased Lands, allow-
ing the Proprietors of Lands to have a Deduction of Part of the
Quit-rents, and all Debtors a Deduction of Part of their Debts."
The last was in April, 1759, by "a Tax upon Land, a Tax upon all
the taxable Inhabitants of this Province, an additional Tax upon all
Negroe Taxables, a Tax upon all Ferries and Pilots, to be licensed
by Virtue of this Bill, an additional Tax upon all Wheels, a Tax
upon lucrative Offices, Places of Profit, Benefices and Professions, a
Tax upon all Clocks, Watches, Saddle Horses and Mares, and a Tax
upon all Perukes." A Mode of Taxation was necessary to be estab-
lished, upon some settled, equal Plan, which, when once found and
experienced to be just, might stand and continue, in all future Time,
as a Precedent and Foundation, whenever we should be called upon
to raise Monies for His Majesty's Service, and thereby avoid all
farther Altercations or Delays, on such future Demands. Could
then the People of Maryland, on this Occasion, do better than imitate,
as near as their Circumstances would possibly admit of, the Wisdom
of their Mother Country? They took the Plan of the Land Tax in
England for their Guide, and have drawn their Bill as agreeable
to it as they possibly, in their different Circumstances, could frame
it, and so as that all Property, as nearly and equally as may be,
in whose ever Hands it was, should contribute to its own Defence.
|
|
|
|
p. 33
|
Had this Plan been once permitted to have been carried into Exe-
cution, we should have seen what the Country could have raised, by
a certain Poundage upon their whole Property, and on any future
Occasion, the Legislature would have had nothing to do but con-
sider the Sum necessary to be raised, and settle the Poundage, and
the whole Business might have always been done with Dispatch to
His Majesty's Requisitions, Harmony in the several Branches of the
Legislature, and very little Expence to the People. The present
Lower House say, that their Bill was such an One as would have
produced all those good Effects, and, in its present Form, framed
so as to be clear of all the reasonable Objections made in 1758 to
the Bill, as it then stood. By all the last mentioned Plans, there was
to be a very partial, unequal, and, in some Cases, a double Taxation
of particular Kinds of Property, whilst many other Kinds, which
might be possessed by quite diffent People, were wholly untouched;
did not it then shew a just Spirit of Equity in the Majority of the
Lower House, no sooner than such partial and unequal Plans were
proposed, to vote them out ?
Their Honours seem, in this Passage, to have discharged their
whole Artillery against the Lower House; but notwithstanding the
|
|
