72 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ble for all public expenditures involving taxation during tlie term 

 that it is in office ; and that to permit private members or political 

 opponents to propose expenditure of the public moneys would not 

 only transfer responsibility from those .who ought to bear it, but 

 would lead to great financial disorder and vast and inexpedient 

 expenditures. The greaL mass of the civil servants of the British 

 Government are also strictly excluded from seats in Parliament, 

 and until recently were debarred from voting for members; the 

 reason for such provisions being that those who have personal 

 interest in taxation because they have imj)rovable property or 

 incomes from taxes, ought to have no voice, direct or indirect, in 

 the imposition of taxes, on the same principle that judges are 

 considered disqualified for trying cases in which they may have 

 or are presumed to have any personal interest. On the other 

 I hand, in the Federal Congress, where lavish and unexpected 

 ' grants of public money are constantly made on motions of 

 ! members not connected with any finance committee, and acting 

 avowedly in behalf of private or local, rather than public, inter- 

 i ests ; and where the authorization of expenditures is divided 

 among a number of committees so that no group of men is 

 responsible for the aggregate appropriations ; it is obviously not 

 ; within the power of the executive department of the Government 

 '' to present and adhere to any previously well-considered scheme 

 of annual taxation and expenditure, or what in most other coun- 

 tries is known as an annual budget. 



The following record of recent experiences, which probably 

 could not happen in the legislature of any other civilized country, 

 strikingly illustrates the senseless and costly way in which the 

 fiscal policy of the United States is not infrequently determined. 

 During a comparatively recent fiscal debate in the United States 

 Senate, a Senator advocated certain proposed appropriations of 

 the public money, which were opposed on the ground that they 

 were in the nature of extravagances, by saying that they could 

 not be grievous to the people, " since they would not amount to 

 more than three cents per day per capita." But three cents per 

 day would amount to nearly eleven dollars per head per annum, 

 or over fifty-five dollars for every family of five persons, and 

 there are millions of men and millions of families in the United 

 States whose income is not a dollar a day. Again, how many of 

 the American people are aware that a bill proposing to grant 

 pensions to seventy thousand ex-slaves, on the ground that they 

 were chiefly instrumental in developing the wealth of the country, 

 is reported to be now pending in the United States Senate ? Such 

 a bill, if once passed, would establish the principle of pensions for 

 civil service, and by swelling the existing pension list to an inor- 

 dinate amount would almost justify the assumption, that the 



