ABSTRACT
It has already been noted that McCulloch accepted government's requirement of revenue as more or less given. The choice had then to be made between the different forms of taxation so that the minimum of harm (and the maximum of benefit through stimulation of effort and frugality) occurred. He accepted Hume's view that 'a pound, raised by a general imposition, would have less pernicious effects than a shilling taken in so unequal and arbitrary a manner;1 as he himself wrote: 'A small amount of taxes, if they be imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner, like the taille in France, may be incomparably more injurious than a far larger amount raised by reasonable duties on expenditure.'2
