[Publius]

While communistic social engineering wasn't on the horizon -- Marx had not yet been born -- there was plenty of social engineering favored by the churches in England. In fact, the Tory Party was the party of the Monarchy and the Established Church, and Tories had no problem with using the tax system to procure socially favorable outcomes. Hamilton slides into this position in an earlier paper where he pushes the idea of a tax on alcohol to curb drunkenness.

Hamilton did not foresee that the government's appetite for money would become so ravenous.

What tickled me in this essay was that Hamilton anticipated Laffer by two centuries. (Or did Laffer read his Hamilton?)

[Bigun]

Hamilton did not foresee that the government's appetite for money would become so ravenous.

Indeed! Hamilton was well aware of the "chains" in the Constitution put there to bind down the federal government but those have been broken and discarded first by Lincoln and then by every mercantile progressive since.