STATE GRANGE OF ILLINOIS. 03 



The current expenses are 63 per cent of the disbursements. So that we 

 must pay annually as a national tax, not only the interest on the national 

 debt, but a sum additional nearly twice as gn-at for current expenses. 

 Comparing the statements of the last Census, we find that while the 8tate 

 and other local debts were $8(58,676,758, whose interest at 7 per cent, would 

 be $60,807,373, the taxation was $280,591,521; or in other words 78 per 

 cent, of the total taxation was for current expenses. It is entirely within 

 bounds, therefore, to say that national and local taxation necessitate the 

 raising of an annual amount three times as great as the mere payment of 

 interest would require; and that consequently each inhabitant must aver- 

 age $14.58 payment for public purposes, and each family $74.21; or every 

 $1,000 worth of property $19.44 annually for taxes alone. 



Having made this estimate I turned to the " Report of the New York 

 Commissioners to revise the laws for the Assessment and Collection of 

 Taxes, 1871," and find this sentence, which justifies me in the belief that I 

 have made no extravagant statement, but below the figures there set forth. 



"The iiggregiitii per eapiUt taxation of tlie whole country, according to 

 these different estimates, would be $21.83, $19 26 and 16.09, respectively, 

 the last figures representing probably the minimum, and indicating a 

 larger p«r c<rpiYa taxation than anj' modern nation has ever before been 

 subjected to, continuously, in time of peace." 



"As a practical matter," says Mr. Wells, in a paper on Rational Prin- 

 ciples of Taxation (Trans. Am. Soc. Sci. Assn. 1874) " in the United States 

 there is now taken directly under the name of taxes from the capital or 

 earnings of the people by the National or State sovereignties, or their 

 representatives, in round numbers between six and seven hundred million 

 dollars per annum for various public purposes, or from one-twelfth to one- 

 fifteenth of the value of the entire annual product of the country — a fact 

 which finds no parallel, in respect to magnitude, in the experience of any 

 other State or nation, and which in itself may go far towards afiording 

 an explanation of some fiscal phenomena which seem wanting in solu- 

 tion; and further that this vast sum is taken by methods which do not 

 rise to the dignity of a system; which in the ca.se of the National Gov- 

 ernment are rarely the same one year with another, and in large propor- 

 tion do not have revenue or the necessities of the State as their primary 

 object ; which in the case of the State Governments are not identical in 

 any two States, and are widely different often as respects contiguous States. 

 To which it may also be added, that important provisions of the law, 

 allowed to stand upon the statute book in almost every State, are practi- 

 cally a dead letter, simply becomes the end sought to be attained is im- 

 possibk- by the employment of any machinery that can be made available 

 for their enforcement. In short, if there is a department of social science 

 labor in which laborers are more needed, and in which greater economic 

 and moral results are attainable, than the department (»f study and inquiry 

 as to the best methods by wliich private property may be taken by tlu" State 

 for public use, I have been unable to discern it." 



