INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 589 



left taxation severely alone ; to be content with existing taxes 

 somewhat more than sufficient in ordinary times to pay the 

 way of the Government ; to reduce debt with any surplus, 

 and to borrow for reasonable excess expenditure of an 

 exceptional time. Great crises require special treatment, but 

 our statesmen, not only of the present time, seek change for 

 its own sake, and act as though the welfare of the country 

 required every budget to be sensational. Very exceptional 

 is the happy year which contributes nothing to the history of 

 changes in taxation. 



Bastiat has well shown that as capital increases in its pro- 

 portion to available labour, its share of the joint produce, 

 though actually increased, is relatively reduced, but that the 

 share of labour is increased both actively and relatively. Peace 

 and prosperity increase capital and increase the wage fund. 



It will be found that the countries in which the revenue is 

 raised dii'fectly from land or from property are those in which 

 poverty is most widespread, and in which the working man 

 has least the power of raising himself in the social scale. 

 What we have to strive after is to reduce unproductive 

 expenditure and increase the productive. Society is founded 

 on industry, prudence, and thrift. Were these universal, 

 poverty would soon disappear. Without them poverty 

 would also be short-lived, for the human race would cease to 

 exist. The struggle for existence, of which Darwin writes, 

 affects man as well as brute ; but man has thrift as an intel- 

 lectual force guiding his conduct, — brutes merely as an 

 instinct. 



A word to the wealthy. PoHticians must please their 

 constituents, or as ))oliticians they cease to exist. Men seek 

 what they regard as their own interests. Their views are 

 often short-sighted, but the poHtician who wishes to gain 

 their votes must support their interests as they conceive them. 

 Cannot means be devised for a propaganda amongst the 

 masses to induce them to look beyond to-day in their own 

 interests — to make them see that when law, this year, checks 

 the profitable use of capital, the wage-earner of next year 

 will have short commons ? that early and improvident 

 marriage amongst the working class is the true cause of low 

 wages ; that the sweater and the extortionate landlord are 

 alike products of improvidence, and that to sacrifice the fiew 

 rich to tiie immediate necessities of the poor is but to eat the 

 seed from which should spring next year's harvest. Surely 

 if those who have eloquence to stir the souls of men could 



