6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as such placed in the worst possible light, he certainly ought not to 

 be deprived of the privileges of a criminal, which are a right to a 

 public investigation according to the rules of evidence adopted by 

 free and enlightened communities, a right to be heard before con- 

 demnation, and the right to be presumed innocent of having prop- 

 erty subject to taxation until the fact is ascertained otherwise by 

 legal proof. But under the existing tax laws of most of the United 

 States there are not accorded to the taxpayer the privileges of a 

 criminal; for no tax can be assessed on a large proportion of the 

 personal property of the State according to any rules of legal evi- 

 dence that any common law court would adopt. No assessor, under 

 the laws of New York, for example, in assessing personal property, 

 can act judicially. The law gives him no power to obtain legal 

 testimony of a character that is admissible in court; he must act 

 the part of an arbitrary despot against an inculpated taxpayer, or 

 not act at all, and his conclusions for acting must be reached at best 

 by the testimony of those who have no means of knowing anything, 

 in a legal sense, about the subject-matter under investigation. It 

 seems clear, therefore, that any attempt to tax without legal evi- 

 dence is an act of usurpation or despotism, wholly antagonistic to the 

 principles of a free government, and that it is a mockery to charac- 

 terize such acts as, in any sense, judicial proceedings. ]STor does 

 the right to reduce or regulate the assessment by the oath of the tax- 

 payer relieve the law, in any degree, of its unequal and despotic 

 character; for every individual holding public office knows that 

 oaths, as a guarantee of truth, in respect to official statements, have 

 ceased to be of any value. The assessments made according to the 

 oaths of parties, furthermore, are not made according to legal evi- 

 dence, upon examination and proofs; but according to the will and 

 secret caprice of each taxpayer, instigated by his selfishness and 

 the natural depravity of human nature. Each taxpayer, under the 

 present rule, becomes, therefore, the interpreter not only of the law 

 but of the fact, and makes a secret interpretation of both, and we 

 have as many interpreters of the law as there are numbers of tax- 

 payers; and also an indefinite multiplicity of assessors; for each 

 person who unfairly reduces his own assessment arbitrarily assesses 

 thereby some other of the community for the difference. Could or 

 would any people apply the same rules for the collection of debts? 

 Is there any one who has so much confidence in human nature that 

 he will propose a law that a person who is sued shall be discharged 

 from all claims of indebtedness if he will make oath, interpreting 

 both the law and the fact himself, that he owes the claimant noth- 

 ing? Is it believed that under tariff laws the government could 

 get sufficient revenue to pay for its collection if the importer was 



