A shilling returned is not a shilling gained, if it was your shilling to begin with, and if it went to the capital and back it will not be a whole shilling when it reaches you.

I have been following the argument over the new duties with great pleasure, chiefly because everyone involved is furious and I am not obliged to be. Allow me to offer a few observations, none of them original, most of them improved by me.

First. There are only three ways to get money: earn it, borrow it, or be given it. A government has a fourth, and it is the reason governments are so cheerful.

Second. The gentlemen assure us the foreigner pays the duty. I have spent a considerable portion of my life abroad, in the company of foreigners, at their tables, and I must report that not one of them has ever mentioned paying it. A man who is being generous will generally find a way to bring it up.

Third. On the promised bounty. Suppose I take a guinea from your coat in the morning, keep it in my desk until the autumn, and then return you nineteen shillings of it with a note remarking on my liberality. You would not thank me. You would count the shillings. I recommend counting the shillings.

Fourth. Every shilling that travels from a man’s pocket to a treasury and home again pays wages to everyone it passes on the road. This is not corruption; it is simply distance. Money, like a letter, arrives lighter than it was sent, and I ought to know, having spent some years in charge of the post.

Fifth. Nothing in this world is certain but death and taxes, and of the two, only one of them keeps being announced as a benefit.

I do not say the duty is wrong. I say that the argument being made for it is wrong, and that a good measure defended by a foolish reason is in more danger than a bad measure defended by a clever one. If we require a revenue, let us say so, in plain words, at the front of the sentence, where the reader will find it.

An honest tax and a candid explanation would cost the Treasury nothing and gain it everything. But candour has never been popular in a counting-house, where they have always preferred the arrangement in which the money is taken quietly and the gratitude is collected loudly.