'PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. j 



despotic power, but it can not abide the pure atmosphere of po- 

 litical liberty and personal freedom." If this principle was rec- 

 ognized as the higher law in European states, it would be safe to 

 say that the revenue collected from their income taxes would be 

 exceedingly small. 



It is also a very curious circumstance that an existing system 

 of municipal or local taxation, which has proved itself to be most 

 intelligent, satisfactory, and efficient for revenue, and most worthy 

 of being studied as a model for adoption, has as yet almost en- 

 tirely failed of recognition or consideration by any of the recent 

 writers on taxation or authorities on general economic subjects 

 on either side of the Atlantic. 



Again, ignorance or willful disregard of the true principles of 

 taxation in the United States has powerfully contributed to fos- 

 ter the idea among its people that they should look to Govern- 

 ment for their support, rather than that the people should sup- 

 port the Government. The practical incorporation of this idea 

 into the fiscal policy of the Government has enabled a compara- 

 tively few persons to accumulate vast fortunes, has built up class 

 distinctions, promoted popular discontent, and established a pre- 

 cedent for state socialism. Figs, however, can no more be gath- 

 ered from thistles than class legislation, whether it be the rich 

 against the poor or the poor against the rich, can be looked to for 

 the perpetuation of popular government or the spread of demo- 

 cratic virtues. The evil of bad taxation is not merely economic, 

 it is moral, and no argument can change its character. 



To defective elementary education, in respect to the principles 

 of taxation, may also be attributed the almost universal disasso- 

 ciation in the minds of the masses between the payment of taxes 

 and the benefit, or profitable return consequent upon such pay- 

 ment. The youth of the United States, and doubtless of all other 

 countries, as he grows up, finds roads and bridges, schools, courts 

 and churches, commercial regulation and police in short, all 

 national, State, or municipal machinery provided for him almost 

 as freely as air, sunshine, or water. He has but to live to expe- 

 rience their benefits or discomforts. At home these subjects, 

 regarded as dry and abstruse, are rarely if ever selected as topics 

 for social conversation, and, if casually brought up, are discussed 

 merely in reference to their bearing upon the interests of this or 

 that political party. The sons, therefore, of even refined and in- 

 telligent American families, so far as home education and influ- 

 ences are concerned, enter upon their duties as citizens, with votes 

 and voices for determining the policy of their government, with 

 not merely an entire ignorance of the principles or methods by 

 which the cost of the benefits accruing from such policy are 

 defrayed, but with a disinclination to receive instruction on the 



