10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cents per day assessed on sixty-five millions of people would 

 amount to nearly eleven dollars per head per annum, or over 

 seven million dollars for the entire country. 



Finally, there has been one most serious and unfortunate mis- 

 take, which nearly all who have undertaken to discuss the prin- 

 ciples and practice of taxation have been prone to make a mis- 

 take, moreover, which more than all else is responsible for the 

 opinion which has come so generally to prevail, that the subject 

 of taxation, through lack of any fixed principles or axioms, does 

 not as yet rise to the dignity of a science ; and that its practice at 

 the best can be but a sort of empiricism, to be varied in propor- 

 tion to the strength which a Government possesses to enforce its 

 enactments, or in proportion to the prejudices of the people who 

 are to be called on for a contribution. The mistake consists in 

 taking up the subject for investigation and discussion, if we may 

 so express it, wrong end foremost ; or in devoting time and effort 

 to warring against abuses ; or in attempting to show how certain 

 forms of taxation commend themselves in respect to productive- 

 ness, freedom from personal inquisition, and economy in collec- 

 tion, and how others are to be avoided for contrary reasons ; and 

 in not attempting to inquire whether the whole subject was un- 

 derlaid by any general laws in accordance with which the contri- 

 butions which the State is compelled as a condition of its exist- 

 ence to exact of its citizens diffuse themselves ; and which laws, 

 being once determined, will constitute a certain and sure founda- 

 tion on which practical administration can be based and conducted. 



The fact that such laws exist and only await discovery may 

 be predicated, as it were, from surface indications, in the form of 

 a great variety of disconnected economic facts, with just as much 

 of certainty as the miner who, picking up here and there in the 

 beds of streams fragments of coal or ore which the elements have 

 scattered, predicates that somewhere there must be a larger vein 

 or deposit from which the fragments have been derived. 



The aggregates of the sums required by the governments of 

 the world for their support are annually increasing, but probably 

 in no greater ratio than the increase in their wealth, or property 

 rightfully subject to taxation ; and in those states in which there 

 is a marked and continued increase in the control of the forces of 

 nature for production, the ratio of taxation to aggregate wealth 

 undoubtedly tends to diminish. 



That there are, however, some striking illustrations that seem 

 to prove to the contrary, is not to be denied. Thus, we have a 

 recent statement that the expenses of the city of Philadelphia in 

 eight years have increased two hundred and thirty per cent, while 

 the taxable valuation of property in the same time has increased 

 only twenty-five per cent. In 1862 the aggregate taxation of the 



