i82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



indeed be denied. It is the fact, and is intended to be so, and he 

 himself is perfectly aware of it ; but it makes hardly any impres- 

 sion on his practical feelings and associations, serving to illustrate 

 the distinction between what is merely known to be true and 

 what is felt to be so." 



Mr. Mill also expressed the opinion that men's minds are so 

 little guided by reason on this subject that if it was attempted to 

 raise all the imperial revenue of Great Britain by direct taxation, 

 the dissatisfaction on the part of the people at having to pay so 

 much would be extreme. 



Speaking on this subject in the House of Lords in 18G0, the 

 Earl of Derby said that " by making the whole revenue of the 

 United Kingdom depend upon direct taxation the pressure would 

 be so odious that wars would be avoided, because no party would 

 incur the odium of carrying them on." 



There can be no doubt that high direct taxes, making evident 

 to the most unobservant citizen the excess of burden imposed 

 upon him, have been the prime cause of the repudiation of public 

 debts in the United States, and the arrest or ruination of internal 

 improvements of great importance. 



Mr. George Opdyke, in his Treatise of Political Economy, 

 advanced the idea that the phenomenon of preference for indirect 

 taxation in the United States might be accounted for in part by 

 the fact, that the unjust manner in which taxes were levied by 

 Great Britain on her American colonies engendered in the public 

 mind of their people " a deep-seated hatred of every form of taxa- 

 tion ; and the direct being its most visible or sensible form, it has 

 been mistaken for the worst an impression that was strength- 

 ened when the most unpopular of our Presidents (the elder 

 Adams) recommended this policy, and when the opposing polit- 

 ical party, seizing the occasion to profit by public prejudice, 

 represented it as the worst form of tyranny." * 



An economic phenomenon in connection with this subject goes 

 far to support the idea that political economy can not be an exact 

 science, inasmuch as it is largely or wholly based on human 

 action, concerning which nothing certain and invariable can be 



* An acute economic student and observer writes as follows on this subject : " I have 

 been very much struck by the apathy of taxpayers to the increase of taxes in their most 

 direct form. Take Philadelphia, for example. Nearly every man o\vna a house there, 

 and yet there seems to have been no objection to the grossest municipal extravagance, 

 entailing heavier and heavier burdens every year. The city to-day levies about ten times 

 as much per head as it did thirty or forty years ago. The exact figures would be easy to 

 get, and would certainly point a moral adverse to your view that direct taxation is twin 

 brother to public economy. I am inchned to look for an explanation to the fact that real 

 estate values have steadily risen, so that after all the increase of taxation has been easily 

 met." 



