PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 517 



What is a Mortgage? — A mortgage may be denned to be a 

 species of conveyance of property — mainly real estate — for the 

 species of conveyance of property — generally real estate — for the 

 security of a debt, generally created by a loan of money, and can 

 not be regarded as a complete, but rather a conditional or quasi-title 

 of the property covered by the conveyance. It is not so much prop- 

 erty as a deed; and neither is property except to the extent of the 

 value of the paper and the labor of writing or printing it, and still 

 both are very valuable as conveying rights to property. The prop- 

 erty is the real estate conveyed or mortgaged, and a tax on the land 

 and another tax on the deed, or a tax on the land and another tax on 

 the mortgage which covers the land, will in effect be a double tax 

 on the land. This tax may be made a quadruple tax: first on the 

 land, then on the deed of the land, then on the mortgage which is 

 on the land, and then on the lease which the landlord may grant to 

 the tenant. 



The following curious instance of hardship in taxing mortgages 

 actually occurred in one of the counties of central New York under 

 the existing system: A worthy farmer and his wife, finding them- 

 selves becoming incapacitated through age from taking practical care 

 of their little farm, sold it for five thousand dollars, and allowed the 

 purchase money to remain in the form of a mortgage, with the ex- 

 pectation of living on the interest paid annually by the purchaser 

 from the profits of the farm. The town being very small, the fact 

 of the sale and the consideration paid became known to every one, 

 and the assessors were compelled, in opposition to their usual prac- 

 tice, to tax the old man to the full amount of the mortgage, as per- 

 sonal property. But the year in which this was done happened to 

 be a year in which the town, anxious to avoid a draft of men for the 

 army, to which the old man was not liable, put up the rate of taxa- 

 tion to more than the legal rate of interest, in order to provide suf- 

 ficient money to purchase recruits. The result was that the poor 

 old man and his wife found that not only was all their income from 

 the mortgage swept away by the tax collector, but they were even 

 obliged to go out for days' work, in order to pay a balance of taxation 

 and provide means of support; and this, too, while the identical 

 farm for which the mortgage was given was taxed at one fifth its true 

 value, and other investments of other citizens of an invisible and in- 

 tangible character undoubtedly escaped taxation altogether. And 

 this we call equality in taxation. 



To Tax Indebtedness is to Tax the Borrower. — If any one 

 doubts that a tax on indebtedness is a tax upon the borrower, or the 

 property which the indebtedness covers, that question can be easily 

 solved by an honest, uniform tax on all State, county, town, and city 



