David Hume Quotes
As it is necessary, that imposts should be levied, for the support of government, it may be thought more convenient to lay them on foreign commodities, which can easily be intercepted at the port, and subjected to the impost
David Hume, 1711-1776, Scottish Philosopher & Historian, Balance of Trade
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
“Commercial imposts” are customs duties. These actually provided virtually all of the tax revenue for the early American nation. Hamilton, realized, and prepared those who would ratify the Constitution that there would have to be additional forms of revenue of the growing nation. Nonetheless, there are a few today who argue that the customs duties are the only legitimate form of Federal taxation as that was what was in existence in early America. This quotation shows that the founding fathers did not intend that the nation be bound to that single mode of taxation.
South Carolina did not like the protectionist measures that Congress had passed. Although the Federal Government clearly had the Constitutional authority to regulate interstate and international commerce, South Carolina, led by John C. Calhoun, took the position that any state could nullify a Federal law’s application within their state. Clearly, that was a vision of a nation that would have very different from our history where the Federal Courts were the only institution that could nullify an act of Congress anywhere.
See {619116}. for a related idea of his.
David Hume, Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as a British Empiricist.
