324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



toms taxes of Great Britain being practically levied on only four 

 articles — spirits, tea, coffee, and tobacco; and the inland revenue also 

 on practically four — spirits, beer, legacies and successions, and stamps 

 (on deeds, insurance policies, bills of exchange, receipts, drafts, etc.). 

 Generalizing, then, on the basis of so broad a fact, how illogical and 

 unscientific was the assumption that whatever persons, property, or 

 business are not taxed directly are exempt from taxation! — and yet 

 the practical exemplification of such a system, in the case of England, 

 was a most efficient instrumentality for grinding the masses of her 

 people down to poverty. 



On the other hand, to generalize from the experience of an indi- 

 vidual or a class in place of that of a nation or community, let us 

 take the case of a person who passes all the year in transitu — moving 

 backward and forward, for example, in a boat on the line of the 

 Erie Canal, or between the head waters of the Mississippi and its 

 mouth; a citizen of no one State, a resident in no one town, and 

 buying all that he eats, drinks, and wears wherever he can buy 

 cheapest. Does this man escape taxation because he has no permanent 

 situs (residence as a citizen), and is unknown by any assessor? If 

 he does, then his occupation is more profitable to the extent of the 

 taxes he avoids than is that of the individual who, following analo- 

 gous occupations, resides permanently in one location, and pays taxes 

 regularly; or else some notable, easily discernible cause, as undue 

 competition to obtain situations, will account for his exemption. 



Let us next consider how practical experience definitely indicates 

 the line of least resistance, in conformity with which those con- 

 tributions of property or service which the State requires its citizens 

 to make for its support, and are worthy of designation as taxes, diffuse 

 themselves. Let us take first that form of indirect taxation which is 

 known as customs, or taxes on imports, one from which the Federal 

 Government of the United States has derived in recent years more 

 than half of its revenue, and Great Britain more than one fourth 

 of its total receipts from all forms of imperial taxes. That 

 all such taxes as a rule diffuse themselves, and ultimately fall upon 

 and are paid by final consumers, is capable of demonstration by a 

 great variety of evidence. Every remission of customs duties on the 

 imports into any country of its staple articles of consumption is fol- 

 lowed by a reduction of cost approximately equal to such reduction, 

 and a consequent increase in consumption. On the other hand, noth- 

 ing is better settled than that an increase in customs taxes on imported 

 articles as a rule increases prices and tends to reduce consumption. 

 When Great Britain, in 1863, reduced her taxes (duties) on her 

 imports of tea from Is. 5d. to Is. per pound, her importation of 

 tea increased from 114,000,000 pounds in 1862 to 139,000,000 in 



