PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 183 



predicated. Thus the argument and evidence are complete that 

 it is not a wise, humane, or perhaps a moral policy for a state 

 created or maintained for the purpose of promoting the interests 

 of its people to adopt a system of indirect taxation for the raising 

 of revenue ; and, furthermore, that it is contrary to human nature 

 for a people to desire or be willing to pay more for any service or 

 commodity than it is intrinsically worth ; or, what is the same 

 thing, perform more work in return for the same than is a fair 

 equivalent. And yet both governments and the people in all 

 countries and at all times (including the present) have shown a 

 preference for this system of taxation over any other. 



One explanation of this curious inconsistency is as follows: 

 It is and ever has been the aim of all governments to avoid re- 

 sponsibility and occasion for popular criticism in respect to their 

 financial policy ; and a direct tax is an annual reminder to their 

 citizens or subjects of the burden of government, and prompts 

 them to hold the government to a strict accountability. Under a 

 free or popular form of government a general system of direct 

 taxation would practically call for an annual judgment of the 

 voters on the fiscal policy of an administration in power, and such 

 a tightening of the purse-strings as would reverse such policy in 

 case of its popular disapproval. But with a system of indirect 

 taxation, as a tariff on imports, a government can undertake the 

 most unnecessary and extravagant measures and obtain revenue 

 sufiicient to defray its contingent exiDenditures without general 

 popular disapproval. 



Indeed, the best defense that can be offered for the continued 

 resort to indirect taxation is, that with the present large demands 

 on the part of all civilized states for revenue to meet increasing 

 fiscal obligations, mainly incurred for war expenditures, past and 

 present, and the unwillingness of the people to pay direct taxes, 

 it would be practically impossible to maintain the modern gov- 

 ernment without large contributions from people of limited re- 

 sources ; and that this purpose can only be accomplished by taxing 

 them indirectly. On the other hand, it may be replied that if 

 direct taxation was alone made the agency for obtaining revenue, 

 unnecessarily large expenditures through the resistance of the 

 masses would not be possible. In like manner, if the present in- 

 direct taxes levied on imports by the United States were to be 

 replaced by direct taxes, collected in money or in kind from pur- 

 chasers for final consumption, on whom the burden in both cases 

 finally rests if every person buying silk or sugar were stopped 

 by a government tax gatherer at the door of the place of purchase 

 and thirty per cent of his purchases taken in kind in one case 

 and fifty per cent in the other in payment for taxes, it is safe to 

 say that such a system would not continue operative any longer 



