148 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tory answer to the question at issue. For the command of a 

 constant and adequate revenue being beyond dispute abso- 

 lutely essential to the existence of organized government, the 

 power to compel or enforce contributions from the people gov- 

 erned, or, as it is termed, " to tax,'' is inherent in and an incident 

 of every sovereignty, and rests upon necessity.* The question of 

 the obtaining of such revenue obviously, therefore, is the question 

 of first importance in the economy of a state ; the one in com- 

 parison with which all others are 'subordinate. For without reve- 

 nue (and a government never has any resources except what it 

 has obtained from the people), regularly and uniformly obtain- 

 able, no governmental machinery for the protection of life and 

 property, through the dispensing of justice and the providing for 

 the common 'defense, could long be maintained; and in default 

 thereof production would stop or be reduced to a minimum, accu- 

 mulations would cease or become speedily exhausted, and civili- 

 zation would inevitably give place to barbarism and the wilder- 

 ness. For like reasons also, or as the old-time Latin maxim, 

 "solus populi suprema lex," concretely expresses it, the state 

 holds command over the lives and liberties of its citizens equally 

 as it does over their fortunes. In fact, the sovereignty of a state 

 consists and exemplifies itself in the power to abridge the liberty 

 of the individual citizen and to take his property; and the char- 

 acter of every government is mainly determined by the intent 

 and purpose for which these two great functions from which all 

 its force proceeds are exercised. 



The Sphere of Taxation. The sequence of these premises 

 is no less important, or rather of transcendent importance; for 

 if the power of taxation is an incident of sovereignty, as it con- 

 fessedly is, then the right to exercise that poiver must be coextensive 

 with that of which it is the incident; or, in other words, as the 

 power of every complete sovereignty over the persons and prop- 

 erty of its subjects is unlimited, the power, therefore, in every 

 such sovereignty to compel contributions for the service of the 



* " When we ask, What right has the state to infringe upon man's natural freedom ? 

 we are involved in the difficulty that there are no rights, in the strict sense of the term, 

 antecedent to the state. All rights that we know anything about are either legal or moral. 

 The right of the state to govern man can not be derived from law, for law is the creature 

 of the state. If it i a moral right, it must rest on the same basis on which all morality 

 rests, and this must be either conscience, or divine revelation, or utility. Of course, con- 

 sent has nothing to do with morality. Conscience, furthermore, will not do as a basis for 

 the state, for conscience does not enlighten us further than to let us know that we ought to 

 obey the state if it is right to do so. Revelation, also, answered only so long as a direct and 

 miraculous connection was believed to exist between human and divine authority. This 

 leaves nothing but utility as the basis for the moral right of the state to interfere with 

 man's natural freedom." Ano7i7/mous. 



