178 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



plete that failed to notice the estimates of the relative burden on 

 taxpayers of direct and indirect taxation by persons well quali- 

 fied by study, and administrative tax experience, to express an 

 opinion. 



It is not a matter of dispute that the cost of collecting di- 

 rect taxes is, as a rule, much less than is the case with indirect 

 taxes, and that of the receipt contingent on the former the largest 

 proportion accrues to the Government. Thus in Prussia, where 

 the administration of taxation may be characterized generally as 

 despotic, the cost of raising revenue from direct taxes has been 

 reported at four per cent and of indirect at twelve per cent. Under 

 a direct tax system everybody knows how much he really pays, 

 and if he votes for war or any other expensive national luxury, he 

 does it with his eyes open to what it costs him. If all taxes were 

 direct, taxation would be much more apparent than at present, 

 and there would be a continuous popular demand, which at pres- 

 ent there is not, for economy in public expenditures. 



In England it has been estimated that for eveTj fifty millions 

 of indirect taxes paid into the exchequer, seventy millions are 

 finally taken from consumers ; and M. Guyot,late French Minister 

 of Public Works, has recently shown by a series of statistical dia- 

 grams, that the octroi system of indirect taxation in France adds 

 on an average twenty per cent to the cost of goods to consumers 

 over and above the tax.* In New Zealand, where a compara- 

 tively small population and limited and definite sources of revenue 

 have afforded extraordinary facilities for making an analysis, an 

 expert has recently calculated that for every million and a half 

 collected through the customs the people of that colony have paid 

 not less than a million and two thirds. 



In 1851 a committee of the Liverpool (England) Financial Re- 

 form Association published a statement, that a careful investiga- 

 tion instituted by it showed, that the difference between the 

 net amount paid into the exchequer from indirect taxes and the 

 gross amount taken through or in consequence of this system 

 from the taxpayers, was not less than an average of thirty-seven 

 per cent ; and added that the evidence that had led to this con- 

 clusion "can neither be controverted as matter of fact, nor 

 strengthened as a matter of argument." 



In 1846 Hon. Robert J. Walker, then Secretary of the Treasury, 

 in accordance with instructions from the United States Senate to 

 report the extent to which the price of domestic products was 

 enhanced by the then existing duties imposed on the import of 



* It seems incredible, he is reported as graphically saying, " that Frenchmen, usually 

 80 sensitive to ridicule, can quietly submit to be ' sweated ' and ' plucked ' like fowls, with- 

 out crying out against this antiquated method of indirect taxation only so long as they are 

 kept blind to the tax." 



