324 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
while our home markets are restricted by difficulties in rural dis- 
tribution which not infrequently clog all the channels of transpor- 
tation, trade and finance,” and it this keen appreciation by the com- 
mercial and manufacturing classes of their own losses by bad 
roads that makes the cities and towns so ready of late to help the 
farmers in making good ones. 
Now, in connection with this idea that the city people want the 
country roads improved, you should bear in mind that the bulk of 
the wealth of this country is in the cities. In Minnesota consider- 
able more than half the taxable property is in the cities and villages, 
In the state of New York only 7% of the state tax is paid by the 
farmers. This proportion varies in different states, but the tendency 
is continually to increase the wealth of the cities in proportion to 
that of the country. 
This being true, why should we not apply the same principle as 
between the owners of property in the country and in the cities 
which we apply betweeu two owners of adjoining farms? Is there 
anything more reasonable than that the city people should help to 
pay the expense of an improvement which is largely for their bene- 
fit? Does not this principle of egual taxation prohibit the burden 
of improving the country roads being cast upon the country people 
alone? The people in the country surely ought not to object to 
requiring the city property to bear a portion of the expense if the 
city men do not. It is not a new principle of taxation, then, which 
we are urging but simply the application of an old,well established 
one. 
Neither is the application of this principle in this way anything 
new. Lord Macauley in his English History, describes the condi- 
tion of the roads in England in the seventeenth century, and the 
description which he gives is a true picture of the situation in nearly 
every state in the United States at certain times of the year. Mr. 
Macauley observes that one of the chief causes of the badness of 
the roads was the defective state of the law which required each 
parish to repair the highways which passed through it, by the 
gratuitous labor of the peasants six days in each year. Mr. Macau- 
ley then observes, “that a route connecting two great towns, which 
have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be main- 
tained at the cost of the rural population scattered between is 
obviously unjust.” He says that a change, however, was finally 
effected, but not without great difficulty, “for unjust and oppressive 
taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more 
willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new.” An 
effort is now being made all over the United States to make the 
change in regard to taxation for roads which Mr. Macauley says 
they had two centuries ago in England, because “unjust taxation 
to which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly than 
the most reasonable impost which is new.” 
Neither is the principle of state aid new in the United States. In the 
early history of United States, at a time when the tendency of our 
government was to limit the functions of the general government 
more than it is now, it was considered necessary to the enjoyment 
