APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



NOVEMBER, 1897. 



PKINCIPLES OF TAXATION. \» ^ 



Bt DAVID A. "WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L., .J 



CORRESPONDANT DE L'lNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC. 



XII. THE EXISTING METHODS OF TAXATION. 



( Continued from vol. li, page 776.) 



TAXATION OF PEKSONAL PKOPEETY.— Great, how- 

 ever, as may be the inequalities in the valuation and assessment 

 of real property, those which obtain in respect to personal are so 

 much greater as to almost preclude the idea of comparison. 



In the incipient stages of society, when property consisted almost 

 or quite exclusively of things tangible and visible — lands, buildings, 

 slaves, horses, cattle, ships, household effects, and implements — 

 when railroad shares, bonds and mortgages, certificates of deposit, 

 and all the multifarious forms of credits and evidences of debt, by 

 which we are enabled to-day to secure interests in land or in visible, 

 tangible personal property in the possession of others, were abso- 

 lutely unknown,* and when the rate of taxation was comparatively 

 small, the theory under consideration was not impracticable in its 

 application, and, under most circumstances, afforded but little oppor- 

 tunity for the working of injustice in respect to arbitrary discrimina- 

 tions in assessing. For when personal property was of a visible and 

 tangible character there was no opportunity to conceal its ownership 

 and to avoid the tax'. Each member of the community furthermore 

 took a sufficient interest in his neighbor's affairs to see that jus- 

 tice was done in this regard. This kind of friendly interest found 



* Of the evidences of wealth owned by one of the richest families in the United States, 

 almost the whole did not have an existence as recently as the year 1840. 



VOL LII. — 1 



