TAXATION AND LAND 



It can be safely said that no modern state 

 ever "licenses" the sale of liquor with the 

 thought of furthering it as a good thing. A 

 liquor tax is of the nature of those amerce- 

 ments anciently so common in English law, 

 intended to repress acknowledged evils, 

 which the state was not yet in condition to 

 handle as crimes in the legal sense. Abol- 

 ish the word "license" from this discussion, 

 supplying liquor dealers duly "amerced" 

 each with his "bill of amercement" instead 

 of his "license," and the theory of liquor 

 taxation would appear in its proper light. 



Nor is this attribution of a punitive char- 

 acter to taxation in certain cases either new 

 or strange. Wagner is by no means its 

 author. From the dawn of Cameral Science, 

 even in Adam Smith's Fifth Book and in 

 Leroy-Beaulieu, where laissez falre is so 

 pronounced, it has been recognized as im- 

 perative that taxation should keep in view 

 the great ends of culture and civilization. 



But society suffers from other licenses 

 than those to sell liquor, from other monop- 

 olies than that of land ; and nothing is easier 



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