Nashville Union And Dispatch

TAXES! TAXES!

Col. S. K. N. Patton, the Radical Representative in the late Legislature from Washington county, is an independent candidate to represent his county in the next Legislature, and has recently issued a circular to his constituents giving them an account of the manner in which he discharged the trust confided to him. He tells some ugly truths in regard to the manner in which our Radical legislators have heaped up the taxes upon the people of this State, a majority of whom they also disfranchised. Col. Patton makes the following showing:

In 1860 tax on property and poll was $312,000
In 1866 it was 862,000
In 1867 it will be 1,524,000

Colonel Patton adds that to this year's tax as shown above must be added the expenses of the "loyal militia," which there is every prospect will be a very considerable item. He thus shows that the taxes which the people will have to pay this year for enjoying the luxury of a Radical government will be more than five times greater than was paid in 1860. Bear in mind that this is the testimony of a Radical member of the Radical Legislature which imposed this iniquitous burden upon the people of Tennessee.

The people of this State will be sorely pressed to meet these heavy taxes, and they are asked to elect the men or their partisans who have thus increased their burden more than five fold since 1860. And pray, what has been accomplished that these enormous taxes should be the result? The State is in a worse condition to-day, in every respect, than it was before the present State government assumed the reigns of power. Are the people of Tennessee who have not been disfranchised willing, by their votes, to perpetuate this condition of affairs? A thorough investigation will show that extravagance of the most profligate character has been practiced in every department of the government. The expenses of the late Legislature will exceed those of any two or three previous Legislatures ever held in this State, and where is the man, whose judgment has not been warped by Radical hate for Southern men and Radical love for office, who can honestly say that the State would not have been infinitely better off had that Legislature never assembled? Here we are as a State with our credit greatly impaired, and liable at any day to receive a shock from which recovery will be the work of years and years, if not next to impossible, and yet expenditures are made with the most reckless disregard of our financial situation, and the result is that the people are taxed as they never were before.