PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 47 



\ 



the declining consumption of sugar has been made the subject of 

 recent debate in the Chamber of Deputies, where the question was 

 pertinently asked by one of the deputies (M. Mdry) if the object 

 of the existing governmental policy in respect to sugar "was 

 mainly to produce it or to have and enjoy it." The Agricultural 

 Society of France has also recently unanimously indorsed a de- 

 mand of the French sugar makers and refiners that the Govern- 

 ment should increase the present bounty on the export of sugar 

 to an extent equivalent to the combined or aggregate bounties 

 allowed in Austria and Germany. 



So much, then, for nearly half a century's experience on the 

 part of the leading continental nations of Europe in attempting to 

 regulate the production, price, and consumption of sugar through 

 a system of bounties. 



Practical experience in respect to the employment of bounties 

 also leads to a deduction, which may be almost regarded in the 

 nature of a principle, that when bounties are employed for the 

 promotion of some public good, the object sought eventually be- 

 comes subordinate to the opportunity which an unnatural and 

 unprincipled perversion of the bounty provisions affords for the 

 promotion of private rather than public interests. The following 

 illustrations, though somewhat comical in their nature, serve to 

 sustain this proposition : 



In the early years of the present century the State of Con- 

 necticut, having in view the promotion of its agricultural inter- 

 ests, offered a premium on the destruction of the crow; to be 

 paid on the production of the head of the bird to the proper 

 authorities. Thereupon the sons of the farmers, desirous of 

 earning a little money, then much more difficult to obtain than 

 at present, diligently searched the woods for the nests of crows, 

 from which at the proper time the eggs were transferred to sit- 

 ting hens, by whom they were hatched and the resulting off- 

 spring brought up until their heads became available for presen- 

 tation and procurement of the bounty. A summary of the general 

 results of such experience would be somewhat as follows : First, a 

 perversion of the legitimate industry of the hen ; second, an ele- 

 mentary lesson for young persons in perpetrating frauds against 

 the State ; third, an impairment of the agency of a bird, whose 

 habits have been proved by subsequent scientific investigations 

 to be beneficial rather than detrimental to the interests of the 

 farmers. Again, in the early history of one of the Northwestern 

 States of the Federal Union a bounty was offered, at the request 

 of the farmers, for the heads of little burrowing animals known 

 as " gophers," which attracted little attention till the experience of 

 several years showed that the disbursements of the State on this 

 account had become abnormal and were rapidly increasing. In- 



