PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 5 



or imagination sustains him in considering to be that which justly 

 represents the personal estate of the taxpayer.* 



In view of the fact (made certain by all experience) that very 

 few returns of personal property, even when supported by oaths, 

 are worthy of implicit credence, the position of the assessor who 

 honestly desires to enforce the law is one of great difficulty and 

 embarrassment. For, in the absence of some superhuman power 

 which will permit that to be seen which to ordinary vision is invisi- 

 ble, and to know what, through the exercise of ordinary reason, 

 can not be known, any attempt on his part to obtain independent 

 cognizance of such commercial and financial instrumentalities for 

 the purpose of valuation and assessment is, on its face, an impossi- 

 bility; and if the co-operation of the person to be assessed is to be 

 invited or relied on, two of the most powerful influences that can 

 control human action love of gain, or the unwillingness to part 

 with property, and the desire to avoid publicity in respect to one's 

 private affairs immediately unite to oppose and prevent such co- 

 operation. 



A resort to personal inquisition, with the accompanying machin- 

 ery of oaths, " dooming," and penalties, is next in order; under 

 which the State, ignoring all rules enacted for the protection of 

 debtors in the ordinary collection of debts, pursues the citizen for 

 the collection of what it claims to be a debt, with no better result, 

 in nine cases out of ten, than the impairment of the public sense 

 of both justice and morality. 



But it is claimed that each individual owes the State annually 

 a certain sum of money in the way of taxes, proportioned to his 

 entire property. If he voluntarily pays, he escapes arbitrary meas- 

 ures. If he declines to pay, or tries to avoid payment, he has no 

 just cause to complain if he is regarded in the light of a criminal, 

 or if the same arbitrary measures are used to collect his tax as if it 

 were a debt owing by one citizen to another. Let us examine this 

 averment. 



If the defaulting taxpayer is to be regarded as a criminal, and 



* " In a case involving the assessment of personal property, in one of the courts of this 

 State a few years ago, an assessor in one of our cities testified that his method of ascertain- 

 ing what personal property a taxpayer owned was to examine the directories, the county 

 clerk's office, and papers relative to estates of deceased persons ; and when he lacked defi- 

 nite information, to guess at the assessment from the place of business or of residence "occu- 

 pied by the taxpayer. If the tax was cheerfully paid for two or three years, the personal 

 assessment would then be ' marked up.' This process of increasing the personal assess- 

 ment went on until, as the witness graphically said, the taxpayer ' squealed,' when the 

 amount was finally fixed at what the taxpayer would bear without swearing it off." 

 Address on the Taxation of Personal Property, by Julien T. Davies, before the Manhattan 

 Single Tax Club, January, 1891, New York. 



