2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



taxation is to our body politic what blood is to the body physical : 

 if healthy, infusing life and warmth ; but if unhealthy, the agent 

 for producing discontent, decrepitude, and paralysis. 



The absence or existence of limitations on the power of a gov- 

 ernment to make compulsory levies on the property or persons of 

 its people for its use or support, constitutes the dividing line be- 

 tween a despotism and a free government a fact most pertinent 

 to legal, economic, and societary studies which has attracted little 

 attention. 



The methods and scope of what is called taxation regulate 

 more than all other agencies the distribution of wealth, which is 

 really the great question of the future to all nations. Ever since 

 Adam Smith wrote his paramount work on the Wealth of Nations 

 the political economists and students of social science have con- 

 cerned themselves mainly with the production of wealth. That 

 problem has been practically solved. Wealth is now produced 

 with a rapidity that the world had never before supposed possible,* 

 and the laws governing its production have become well under- 

 stood by those who have made a special study of the subject. An 

 inevitable result of this condition of affairs has been, that wealth 

 produced under the greater control that man in general has ob- 

 tained over the forces of Nature has aggregated itself, as it always 

 will, in the hands of those whose faculties especially qualify them 

 to obtain and manage it, and who, in common parlance, have 

 received the name of " money-getters." These have become enor- 

 mously rich, while the masses, whose material condition is also 

 absolutely much better than at any former period of the world's 

 history, are, however, relatively poorer. Improved facilities for 

 transportation have greatly facilitated intercommunication,! and 

 the opportunity thus afforded for the observation of extreme con- 

 trasts in individual conditions has operated as a very great factor 

 in occasioning discontent among the masses, who by reason of the 



* Recent investigations indicate that the absolute effective force available to the Ameri- 

 can people for the production of wealth is more than three times greater at the present time 

 than it was in 18G0. The outflow of British capital for investment in foreign securities 

 and negotiated in London alone, during the eight years next previous to 1890, has been 

 estimated by those best qualified to express an opinion, to have amounted to the large sum 

 of nearly or quite $700,000,000 per annum. And this estimate does not comprise all the 

 British capital loaned to foreign countries, but only such as was subject to public cog- 

 nizance. 



f The number of people annually transported on the railroads alone in the United States 

 exceeds many times the total population of the country, the annual number for the New Eng- 

 land States being more than sixteen times greater than their population. The widening of 

 the sphere of one's surroundings, and a larger acquaintance with other men and pursuits, have 

 long been recognized as not productive of content. Writing to his nephew more than one 

 hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson thus concisely expressed the results of his own observa- 

 tion: " Traveling," he says, " makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age 



