49o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nothing in the system I have described which is at variance with the 

 principles of the American people. 



All that is required to make such a system a boon both to the 

 employer and to the laborer is that the officials charged with the in- 

 spection of the system and the protection of the immigrants' inter- 

 ests should be intelligent, honest, and fearless in the discharge of 

 their duties. 



PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



By the Late Hon. DAVID A. WELLS. 



XX. THE LAW OF THE DIFFUSION OF TAXES. 



PART II. 



ATTENTION is next asked to an analysis of the incidence of 

 - taxation, what is mainly direct, on processes and products, and 

 on the machinery by which one is effected and the other distributed, 

 and at the outset the following propositions in the nature of economic 

 axioms are submitted, which it is believed will serve as stepping 

 stones to the attainment of broad generalizations. 



Thus, property is solely produced to supply human wants and de- 

 sires; and taxes form an important part of the cost of all production, 

 distribution, and consumption, and represent the labor performed in 

 guarding and protecting property at the expense of the State, in all 

 the processes of development and transformation. The State is thus 

 an active and important partner in all production. Without its 

 assistance and protection, production would be impeded or wholly 

 arrested. The soldier or policeman guards, while the citizen performs 

 his labor in safety. As a partner in all the forms of production and 

 business, the State must pay its expenses — i. e., its agents, for their 

 services; and its only means of paying are through its receipts from 

 taxation. Taxes, then, are clearly items of expense in all business, 

 the same as rent, fuel, cost of material, light, labor, waste, insurance, 

 clerical service, advertising, expressage, freight, and the like, and 

 on business principles they find their place on the pages of profit and 

 loss; and, like all other expenses which enter into the cost of produc- 

 tion, must finally be sustained by those who gratify their wants or 

 desires by consumption. Production is only a means, and consump- 

 tion is the end, and the consumer must pay in the end all the ex- 

 penses of production. Every dealer in domestic or imported mer- 

 chandise keeps on hand, at all times, upon his shelves, a stock of dif- 

 ferent and accumulated taxes — customs, internal revenue, State, 

 school, and municipal — with his goods; and when we buy and carry 



