TAXATIO:^. 55 



age of taxation to be .025, which will be conceded not an over- 

 estimate, the entire tax, State,' count}' and town, was about 

 $5,()20,572; one-sixth of this amount is $936, 7(52. The number 

 of taxable polls in 1870 was 143,195. Reckoning these at three 

 dollars each, we have for their value $129,585, a sum less than 

 .46 of one-sixth of the entire tax, or in other words the aggregate 

 poll tax at three dollars for each poll is about one-thirteenth the 

 whole tax. 



An objection to an invariable sum as poll-tax arises from the 

 fact that the percentage of voters assessed lor poll-taxes only, is 

 really large — in many places this class of voters outnumbering all 

 the rest. The majority, in each case, have no check in voting 

 away mone\' for extravagant expenditures, inasmuch as their own 

 tax is not thereby increased. 



Of the various plans which have from time to time been pro- 

 posed fur remedying this evil, there is none which seems better to 

 meet the requirements of the case then that suggested by the 

 Assessors of Marblehead, Mass., and endorsed by the Commis- 

 sioners appoirited by the Governor and Council of that State, " to 

 inquire into the expediency of revising and amending the laws 

 relating to taxation and exemption therefrom," in their report of 

 January, 1875. 



This system provides a minimum and a maximum limit for the 

 poll-tax, and makes the tax increase with the increase of expendi- 

 ture, and diminish with its reduction. To use the numbers pro- 

 posed by the Assessors of Marblehead, the minimum limit would 

 be fixed at two dollars, and " when the amount of town tax to be 

 assessed" should exceed "one per cent, of the valuation of the 

 previous year, the poll-tax would be increased twenty-five per 

 cent., or to two dollars and fifty cents. When the amount to be 

 raised should equal or exceed one and a half per cent, of the 

 valuation of the pi'evious year, the poll-tax would be increased 

 fifty per cent., or to three dollars, and when the amount to be 

 raised should equal or exceed two per cent, of the valuation of 

 the previous year, the poll-tax would be increased one hundred 

 per cent , or to four dollars, and thus with increase of the amount 

 to be raised the poll-tax would increase in like ratio up to the 

 maximum limit." 



By this method every voter who pays a poll tax only, would 

 have a direct pecuniary interest in keeping down expenditures, 

 and yet would not be so heavily taxed as to endeavor to limit 



