PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 765 



of tlie local errors seen in the works of many masters, old and 

 modern, may be attributed. 



If the free-hand drawings were set aside or destroyed as soon 

 as made, it would remove the temptation that now exists to 

 waste time in technical finish that might to the pupil's lasting 

 benefit be spent in new effort at discovery, discriminating differ- 

 ences in various inclosed areas, values, or colors. 



"We might then come to be able to see the beautiful in Nature 

 spread at our feet, and in common things at our very door, and 

 not as now, under the name of art, hew down the mind of the 

 rising generation to the narrow notion that the beautiful must 

 be sought only on the canvases and in the conventionalities of 

 the past or present age of interpreters, however exquisite or 

 grand their works may be. 



PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L., 



C0RRESP0NDA2SrT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC. 



XI. THE EXISTING METHODS OF TAXATION. 



SUBJECTS OF TAXATION. The subjects of taxation, to 

 use a happy generalization of Justice Field of the United 

 States Supreme Court (Foreign-held Bond Case, 15 Wallace), 

 "are persons, property, and business. Whatever form taxation 

 may assume, whether as duties, imposts, excises, licenses, or direct, 

 it must relate to one of these subjects. It is not possible to con- 

 ceive of any other, though as applied to them taxation may be 

 exercised in a great variety of ways." 



With this postulate we are legitimately led up to the consid- 

 eration of the ways or methods by which the State or Govern- 

 ment, in virtue of its sovereignty, and on the ground of necessity, 

 and solely for its support, taxes or compels contributions from 

 the three above-enumerated subjects, for the purpose of defraying 

 its expenditures. 



Apportionment of Taxation. This department of the sub- 

 ject of taxation, while the most practical and therefore the most 

 interesting, is at the same time the one most obscure, and the one 

 about which there is the most striking difference of opinion among 

 writers on economic and fiscal subjects. The four maxims or 

 canons laid down by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, by 



right eye, which was chiefly used, that when looking at a pinhole ten inches off he saw 

 two, about one tenth of an inch apart, and between these several more, yet the accuracy 

 obtained was the highest ever recorded 98'S4 per cent. 



