PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. n 



city of Providence, R. L, was $379,000. In 1892 it was $2,333,000. 

 In the former year tlie taxable real and personal estate was valued 

 at $61,000,000, while for the year 1892 the valuation was $155,000,- 

 000. Thus the increase in the amount of taxes collected within 

 the thirty years was five hundred and fifteen per cent, while in 

 the amount of assessable property the gain was only one hundred 

 and fifty-four per cent. The rate of tax increased during the 

 same period from $6.50 per $1,000 to $15. 



Among the leading nations of the world the comparative bur- 

 den of exactions by Government is heaviest in Russia, Italy, and 

 France. In Russia the present governmental exactions under 

 the name of taxes from the agricultural peasant are reported to 

 be about forty-five per cent of the value of his annual product or 

 earnings. In Italy the State exaction is believed to absorb from 

 one third to one half of the value of its agricultural product. The 

 present aggregate of annual taxation in France is undoubtedly 

 the greatest to which any country in modern times has been sub- 

 jected ; and including all taxes national and local is estimated 

 as in excess of $1,400,000,000, or about one fourth of the annual 

 income of its people. And yet it is claimed that the prosperity of 

 the nation is increasing. There can, however, be no doubt that 

 the financial strain caused by such great and continuous demands 

 on the income of the French people is beginning to be severely 

 felt ; and in a recent budget discussion in the Senate of the re- 

 public, M. Loubet, chairman of its financial committee, insisted 

 that taxation had reached its utmost endurable limit.* 



As far back as 1879 the taxation imposed by Spain on her island 

 of Cuba was reported to have made the latter the most heavily 

 taxed country in the world ; the rate on its free population being 

 then estimated as equal to $34.50 per capita. 



The cost of the Government of Great Britain for 1893-94 de- 

 frayed by what are termed imperial taxes mainly customs and 

 inland revenue, and deducting all items of compensating rev- 

 enue as receipts from crown lands, etc. was 75,427,000. The 



* In a recent article in the lEconomiste Fran9ais, M. Leroy-Beaulieu presents Bome facts 

 which enable foreigners to form an opinion of the financial management of France under its 

 present democratic form of government. There is at present, according to this well-recog- 

 nized authority, an actual annual deficit of between three and four hundred million francs. 

 The floating debt, " official or concealed," has taken enormous proportions, and is met by a 

 variety of expedients, and mostly by secret loans (which are always costly), because the 

 Government does not dare contract a large public loan, the only regular and least expensive 

 means of extrication from financial embarrassments. Expenses are piling up and nobody 

 takes any thought of repressing them. In short, according to M. BeauUeu, there is under 

 the present Government, notwithstanding " constant and vain buzzing on the subject of 

 democratic reforms, the adhesion of a mollusc to the wretchedest routine and a downright 

 hatred of every kind of improvement." 



