PRINCIPLES OF taxation: 13 



A recent English writer has claimed that the experience in 

 reference to taxation of the forty-five anomalous sovereignties 

 which now make up the United States [none subordinate to a 

 national Government except to a limited extent and in respect 

 to particular questions], has thrown a great light upon the temper 

 of democracies. "Half a century ago every thinker predicted 

 that the one grand evil of democracy would be meanness ; that it 

 would display an ' ignorant impatience of taxation,' and that it 

 would refuse supplies necessary to the dignity, or at least to the 

 visible greatness, of the state." That prediction has, however, 

 proved itself, not only by the experience of the United States, but 

 also of the leading countries in Europe, to be the exact contrary 

 of the facts. "The lower the suffrage, the higher the budget 

 mounts. Democracy loves spending, is devoted to dignity, and, 

 provided they are indirect, or fall heaviest on the rich, will pay 

 any amount of taxes. The English democracy with household 

 suffrage, though it has reduced its debt, has increased its budget, 

 increased rates all over the country, and would not be frightened 

 to-morrow if a great socialistic experiment were to cost it a hun- 

 dred millions. It hardly shudders when it is asked to support 

 in comfort, at a cost of about 17,000,000 ($85,000,000), its whole 

 aged poor. The French democracy has nearly doubled its taxa- 

 tion and raised its debt more than a third, apart from the tribute 

 paid to Germany. The German democracy, with enlarged suf- 

 frage, a poor soil, and nearly universal poverty, is always grant- 

 ing new demands, whether for soldiers, ships, colonies, or central- 

 ized officials." 



But it is in the United States, with universal suffrage and the 

 richest of estates, that the extravagance of government expendi- 

 tures, sustained by taxation, rises to a point which fiscal experts, 

 like Alexander Hamilton, Robert J. Walker, and Albert Gallatin 

 in the United States, and Sir Robert Peel or Ricardo in Eng- 

 land, could not have been persuaded to believe possible. Either 

 of them would have declared an American pension list amounting 

 to $155,000,000 (31,000,000) a year too absurd for credence, and 

 would have criticised the prophet who made the prediction for 

 his poverty of invention. 



That the interests benefited by national extravagance will, 

 undfer free suffrage, always constitute a formidable obstacle to 

 judicious tax reform, especially if such reform contemplates na- 

 tional economizing, can not well be doubted ; and also that this 

 opposition will be re-enforced to some extent by a popular feeling 

 that something of color and dignity will go out of national life 

 by any marked curtailment of the expenditures of the State. On 

 the other hand, the political supremacy of the United States con- 

 fessedly yet resides in its agricultural classes, who more than any 



