390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion between direct and indirect taxes that is founded on sound 

 philosophy and large experience, and can not be refuted — namely, 

 a direct tax has always in it an element of compulsion. The person 

 against whom or on whose property or income a direct tax is levied 

 has no option Avhether or when he shall pay. There is nothing volun- 

 tary about it. On the other hand, an indirect tax, whoever may first 

 advance it, is paid voluntarily, and primarily by the consumer of the 

 taxed article. 



But the most important and vital issue involved in the income 

 tax enacted 1894 (August 18th) was that it designedly provided 

 for discriminating taxation, and this fact may be best demonstrated 

 and brought to popular comprehension in the following manner: 

 In a recent interview (1885) with a leading British parliamentary 

 authority, the conversation turned on the new and unprecedented 

 discriminating rates in the legacy and succession taxes imposed by 

 the present British Parliament, and the opinion of the writer was 

 asked respecting them. He returned, offhand, the answer that he 

 could only discuss them from a British point of view, for, under the 

 Constitution of the United States, such taxes could not be levied by 

 the Federal Government, contemporaneously, and how promptly for- 

 eign authorities recognize the truth of this position is shown by the 

 following extract from an editorial in the London Times on the phase 

 of the income statute then before the United States Supreme Court : 

 '' Were we," it said, " under the United States Constitution, Sir Wil- 

 liam Harcourt's budget would have been declared unconstitutional. 

 Populist leaders in America must envy us the freedom of dealing 

 with other people's property, enjoyed in this motherland of liberty." 

 This conversation led to a historical investigation, and the recog- 

 nition of wdiat seemed to be a fact little or not before noted, that 

 the United States is the only nation that now exists or ever has ex- 

 isted which, through constitutional or other provisions, has, or has 

 had, any limitations on its Government in respect to the general 

 exercise or extent of the power of taxation. If there are any excep- 

 tions, they are to be found in the legislative enactments of the 

 Prench ISTational Assembly of 1789, and possibly in what is now 

 known as the referendum system of Switzerland. 



But a government that has no limitations on its power of taxa- 

 tion, that can arbitrarily take in whatever manner, to whatever 

 extent, and at Avhatever time it pleases, the property of its people or 

 subjects, whether that right exists in theory, as in England, or in 

 actual practice, as in Germany, Austria, and Russia, is a despotism. 

 If this assumption and reasoning may seem to any one extravagant 

 and unwarranted, his attention is respectfully asked to the following 

 expression of opinion on this subject by the United States Supreme 



