5 88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to effectually expose the fallacy of the somewhat popular idea, 

 that taxation is really a gradual (and in the course of time a com- 

 plete) confiscation by the public of all private or individual prop- 

 erty ; and that in a certain sense no man by reason of taxation 

 can be regarded as having a perpetual ownership of any property ; 

 an annual tax on the value of any property of one and a half per 

 cent, with five per cent interest, exhausting such value in about 

 thirty years. If taxation brought no returns, either direct or in- 

 direct, to the persons or property assessed, there would be some 

 warrant for regarding it as an act of confiscation ; but if it pro- 

 vides, as every correct system of taxation does, for a certain class 

 of expenditures, in default of which in the present state of society 

 there would be no adequate protection to property and no encour- 

 agement for its accumulation and development, then there is no 

 more reason for regarding taxation as confiscation than for at- 

 tributing the same effect to payments for wages, rents, repairs, 

 interest,* insurance, etc. 



A practical illustration of the truth of this conclusion is to be 

 found in the circumstance, that as a rule the class of property 

 paying the highest proportional taxes in any community is the 

 most profitable or desirable to its owners. It is also a pertinent 

 question, why property which has paid taxes for a given period 

 say thirty years and has so been absorbed by the public, should 

 continue to be assessed ; or why, if the person popularly regarded 

 as the owner of such property should refuse to pay taxes, the 

 property should be sold for taxes when it has already been taken 

 to itself by the public. 



Another point of interest in connection with this subject 

 which has been little noticed by economists is, that if a high de- 

 gree of civilization can not exist without a high degree of taxa- 

 tion,! the methods of economizing labor, or, what is the same thing, 

 of producing a greater amount of product with a given amount 

 of labor conditions which make high civilization possible 

 enable a government progressive in this respect continually to 

 take a larger share of the results of the work of its citizens, 

 expressed in terms of money, without really increasing their 

 burdens of taxation. " Every invention and discovery by which 

 the production of commodities is facilitated and their value 



* This same fallacy was indeed applied to interest in the United States, when an eminent 

 official maintained that in paying interest for many years on the public debt the people of 

 the country had more than paid off the principal, and were therefore morally justified in 

 repudiating the debt. 



f Year by year the public demands more efficient schools, better postal facilities, better 

 harbors, improved paving, drainage, and lighting of streets, a stricter abatement of nuisances 

 and supervision of infectious disease. All this means a higher standard of public well- 

 being, entailing, however, constantly increased public outlay. 



