Daily National Intelligencer

On Expensive Government.

[From Cobbett's Political Register]

Maidstone, Kent, June 29.

We are eternally told, by those whose interest it is to deceive us, that a government, to be good, must be expensive, must be costly; that the persons belonging to it, must have monstrous sums of money given to them; must keep innumerable servants and horses; must live bedizened out in all sorts of finery; must be attended with guards, dressed up in gold-laced clothes; and that a plain, simple government, where the persons belonging to it have low salaries, is fit for nothing but to rule a country that is worth nothing, and that is not much larger than the Isle of Thanet. Now, my friends of the county of Kent, nothing can be more false than this. It is not only not true, but it is the very reverse of the truth, as is amply demonstrated in the case of the American Republic. That Republic has as many people in it as England has. It has finer cities than any in England or any in Europe. None, indeed, that are nearly so populous as London and Westminster, but two, at least, which surpass in population, and infinitely surpass, in all other respects, all the other cities in the British dominions. That republic has about fourteen hundred miles of sea coast; many rivers navigable more than a hundred miles up; that republic has, probably, more than a hundred sea-ports and harbors. It has very nearly as much commercial shipping as England, Ireland and Scotland, all put together, and very nearly as many sailors. This, then, is no trifling country; and yet the Chief Magistrate of that country; a country which has lately carried on single handed, a long & triumphant war against England: the Chief Magistrate of that country receives only 6,000 pounds a year: that is to say, my friends of Kent, only about a seventh part as much as your Lord Camden receives annually for his sinecure place of Teller of the Exchequer! And, observe, that the President of the United States, the Chief Magistrate of that great nation, a man of such talents, such experience, such tried virtue as he must be, receives, in the course of twenty years, no more than as much as the Princess Charlotte and her husband will receive in pension and in out-fit, during this one year! And I beg you further to observe, that, as the Prince of Saxe Cobourg is to receive 50,000 pounds a year for life, in case of the death of the Princess, the least possible sum that this nation will have to pay him, for fifty years, if he should live so long, and if the law granting the pension should remain in force, will be a sum more than eight times as great as that which our brethren in America will have to pay to the Chief Magistrate of the country, the man who performs for them by their authority, and in their name and behalf, all the offices and acts of sovereignty.

Ah, my friends of Kent, need we wonder that there are no paupers in that country? Need we wonder, that in that country the common laboring man, with a large family, may live well, go well clothed, and lay by 30 pounds sterling a year? They would fain persuade us, that these expences of government are not felt by the poor. What, then, does not the poor man help to pay the taxes? Can he possibly open his mouth to eat until he has paid a tax? Does he not pay a tax upon his salt, sugar, tea, malt, soap, candles, and, indeed, does he not pay a tax on his bread and meat and cheese and butter; for, have not the land, the horses, the leather, the iron, and every thing else been taxed, by the means of which his bread and meat have been produced? Yes, and the man who called out to Lord Camden, and told him that every morsel of bread that went into the mouths of his wife and nine children, was taxed to help to pay his Lordship's salary, showed as much sense as he did spirit; and, had I been at Maidstone, I would rather have gone home and have dined with that brave man and his wife and nine children off a morsel of that taxed bread, than I would have gone to dine upon the delicate fruit of the tax at the Bell Inn.

WM. COBBETT.