586 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of taxation. The fruits of such expenditure are general educa- 

 tion and general health ; improved roads, diminished expenses of 

 transportation, and security for life and property. And it will 

 be found to be a general rule that no high degree of civilization 

 can be maintained in a community, and indeed that no highly 

 civilized community can exist, without comparatively large taxa- 

 tion ; * the converse of this proposition, however, at the same 

 time not being admitted, that the existence of high taxes is 

 necessarily a sign of high civilization. 



It is interesting to note, however, that as civilization in- 

 creases, and taxation becomes absolutely greater, it also becomes 

 relatively less. Thus, in most of our great cities the cost of the 

 water supply to its inhabitants constitutes at present one of the 

 largest items of municipal expenditure an item that forty or 

 fifty years ago hardly found a place in municipal accounts. And 

 yet the cost of a supply of even the minimum quantity of water 

 now regarded as essential to meet the ordinary requirements for 

 personal cleanliness and health would be very much greater to 

 every citizen, were he to undertake to supply himself, even if it 

 were possible, by the old methods ; to say nothing of the comfort 

 and luxury, as well as protection against loss by fire, which an 

 increased supply, made possible only through a greatly increased 

 aggregate of taxation, has afforded. 



In short, taxation assessed and levied under conditions clearly 

 conformable to reason and justice, is no more of an evil than any 

 other necessary and desirable form of expenditure. Its proper 

 exercise does not diminish, but protects and augments, national 

 wealth, and is no more a burden upon the people of a state than 

 the payments made for the care and profitable management of 

 private or corporate investments of capital are a burden upon 

 the owners of such capital. Indeed, M. Menier, whose study of 

 taxation entitles him to be regarded as an authority, contends 

 that the analogy between the expenditures of a state which have 

 to be remunerated by taxes and the expenditures of a manufac- 

 turer is most complete. The state, he says, possesses a certain 

 extent of territory. That territory has such and such natural 

 utilities. These natural utilities have been developed by labor 



* " I have not seen an instance of rent being very low, and husbandry at the same time 

 being good." Lowe, quoted by McCulloch. 



"It is universally found that the low rents absorb the largest proportion of the prod- 

 uct." H. C. Carey, On Wealth, p. 3^1. 



" An ingenious philosopher has calculated the universal measure of the public imposi- 

 tions by the degrees of freedom or servitude that accompany them, and ventures to assert 

 that, according to an invariable law of Nature, it must always increase with the former 

 and diminish in a just proportion to the latter." Statement by Gibbon, on the authority of 

 Montesquieu. 



