78o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



imperfect system of taxation that ever existed; that, with the ex- 

 ception of moneyed corporations, it is a mere voluntary assessment, 

 which may be diminished at any time by an offset of indebtedness 

 which the law invites the taxpayers to increase ad infinitum, bor- 

 rowing on pledge of corporate stocks, United States bonds, legal- 

 tender notes, etc., all exempt from taxation; that its administration 

 in respect to justice and equity is a farce and more uncertain and 

 hazardous than the chances of the gaming table; and that its con- 

 tinuance is more provocative of immorality and more obstructive 

 of material development than any one agency that can possibly be 

 mentioned. A stringent enforcement only leads to greater per- 

 versions and a wider evasion. A lax enforcement does not re- 

 duce its inequalities and general want of application to actual 

 conditions.* 



The problem, then, is what taxes to introduce in place of this 

 confessed failure of the general property tax. 



There can be little doubt that the desire for greater simplicity 

 in taxation is generally felt, and in part put into practice. The 

 mass of various kinds of imposts, added without any system or real 

 connection or relation one to another, has often resulted in so large a 

 number of charges on Government account as to defeat itself. The 

 French taxes at the end of the last century, with their added fault 

 of inequality and injustice in distribution, led naturally to the the- 

 ory of a single tax — the impot unique of the physiocrats — ^which 

 did not become a fact, yet registered the protest against the multi- 

 plicity and crying oppressiveness of the remains of feudal dues and 

 fiscal experiments undertaken under the stress of an empty treasury. 

 So it has been noted at the present time that where an opportunity 

 has offered there is a tendency in European countries to simplify 

 their taxes, and, as in the case of Switzerland, prepare the way for 

 income and property taxes. It is a greater dependence on such 

 direct taxes in place of indirect taxes that has distinguished the 

 great fiscal changes in recent years. Germany may have wished to 

 establish a brandy monopoly, and Russia may resort to a monopoly 

 of the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits. But England in- 

 creases her death duties, France and the United States seek to frame 



* The commissioners " have no confidence in any system of inquisition or system which 

 requires assessors to be clairvoyants ; to ascertain things impossible to be ascertained by 

 the agencies provided in the law ; to ascertain the indel)tedness of the taxpayer; to ascer- 

 tain or know who is the owner of property at a given time that can be and is transferred 

 hourly from owner to owner by telegraph or lightning, and that may be transported into or 

 out of the jurisdiction of the assessor with the rapidity of steam, or that requires assessors 

 or taxpayers to make assessments on evidence not admissible in any court, civil or criminal, 

 in any civilized country where witches are not tried and condemned by caprice or malice on 

 village or neighborhood gossip." 



