60 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ciple as old at least as constitutional government, and is so impor- 

 tant that it is incorporated in the fundamental law of every State 

 in the Federal Union. Article V of the Constitution of the 

 United States also provides that private property shall not be 

 taken for public use without due compensation. It is clear, 

 therefore, that there must be a line between the taking of private 

 property for public use by the law of eminent domain and by 

 taxation. But how can that line be drawn except by the rule 

 that rightful taxation means uniformity of burden on com- 

 peting vocations and competing property ? The following de- 

 cision by the Supreme Court of New Jersey is clearly in con- 

 formity with this conclusion: "A tax," it said, "upon the 

 persons or property of A, B, and C individually, whether desig- 

 nated by name or in any other way, which is in excess of an 

 equal apportionment among the persons or property of the class 

 of persons or kind of property subject to taxation, is, to the ex- 

 tent of such excess, the taking of private property for a public 

 use without compensation. The process is one of confiscation 

 and not taxation." (Township Committee of Reading, 35 N. J., 

 p. 66, 1872.) 



Fifth. Taxation should not be employed as an agency or for 

 the purpose of enforcing morality, or as an instrumentality for 

 correction or punishment. 



The punitive or moral idea has probably always entered to 

 some extent as an element in all those taxes which have been 

 levied on luxuries, and more especially on all those forms of 

 luxury which are regarded as frivolous or as mere insignia of 

 wealth and title, such as hair powder, wigs, coats of arms, car- 

 riages, etc. But when a government assumes to inquire what 

 are the articles the consumption of which is prejudicial to the in- 

 terests and well-being of its people, and then embodies the results 

 of such inquiries into its measures of revenue ; so that while pro- 

 viding means for the support of the state it also prescribes how 

 the citizen ought to live, dress, eat, or drink, the result is always 

 ineffectual for purposes of revenue, and far more so for the pro- 

 motion of morality. Examples illustrative and confirmatory of 

 these conclusions are so numerous as to make a selection of them 

 not a little difficult. The following have been cited by the late 

 Sir Morton Peto : " A tax on dice in Great Britain, repealed in 

 1862, had the ludicrous result of producing for many years a reve- 

 nue of five shillings per annum from a license of thirty to forty 

 pounds a year on the business of manufacturing them. Another 

 provision of law was that every person having dice unstamped by 

 the revenue officials in his possession was liable to the penalty of 

 five pounds for each pair ! But stamped dice could not be ob- 

 tained. Every one who wanted dice, even cabinet ministers and 



