4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



first incidence, there is a problem likely to come at no distant day 

 before tax legislators, which up to the present time they have 

 hardly thought of, and which is certain under a free government 

 to be solved by human nature rather than by statute.* 



The scope and methods of raising revenue for the support of a 

 State are also some of the greatest, if not the very greatest, deter- 

 mining factors of the morality of a people. " I insist," said an 

 eminent lawyer and member of the Constitutional Convention of 

 the State of New York in 1868, " that a people can not prosper 

 whose officers work and tell lies. There is not an assessment 

 roll now made out in this State that does not both tell and 

 work lies." And no member of the convention, or any repre- 

 sentative of the press, either then or subsequently, has chal- 

 lenged the assertion. The extent also to which the existing sys- 

 tem of taxation in the United States has obliterated the sense of 

 honesty in its people in their individual dealings with the Govern- 

 ment, removed all repugnance to the act of perjury, and caused 

 each one to justify himself to his conscience for making a false 

 return in the matter of taxes, by the supposition that every one 

 is doing the same, is also strikingly illustrated by the circum- 

 stance, that a high court in one of the States of the Federal Union 

 has recently decided that " perjury in connection with a man's 

 tax lists does not affect his general credibility under oath." 



The idea that the proper relation of a State to its people is 

 essentially of a paternal nature finds much of popular approval, 

 and is without doubt popularly desired. Accepting this idea as 

 correct, let us exemplify it in its application to the State. Sup- 

 pose a father in dealing with his family, placed, so far as his chil- 

 dren are concerned, a premium on lying and concealment, and 

 vested with a heavy penalty all truthfulness and straightfor- 



* M. L6on Say, the distinguished French economist, hi a recent discussion of the income 

 tax, asserts that the public and private financial history of France has been one of inces- 

 sant abolition of private and state debts, and in substantiation of such a conclusion he 

 shows that if a capital of 8,330 francs had been invested in national debt obligations of 

 France in 1522 and allowed to remain subject to the various changes in respect to capital 

 and interest which the financial policy of the state has necessitated and required under its 

 successive governments, the present value of the investment to the legitimate heirs of the 

 first investor would be but 83 francs. 



The reduction of annual income to the holders of the national debts of Europe, contin- 

 gent on the refunding of the same during the year 1894, is estimated at $24,000,000, requir- 

 ing an addition of $960,000,000, with an earning capacity of two and a half per cent per 

 annum, to the total of what is called capital, to make up for the subtraction of income 

 from the individual holders of such securities in the previous year. In the United States 

 the shrinkage in the amount of annual dividends paid on the capital stock of its railroads 

 between the years 1892 and 1894 is reported as in excess of $14,000,000, and in the annual 

 interest on bonds during the same period at $13,000,000, or a total greater than the losses 

 contingent on the whole refunding operations of the states of Europe during 1894. 



