We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must … have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.
—Thomas Jefferson. Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816.
Heavy taxes are never desired by the people. It is the profligacy of the legislature that makes them necessary. The problem therefore needs to be attacked at the root—by addressing profligacy in government.
