PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. i 95 



PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L., , 



CORRESPOND ANT DE L'lNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC. 



XIII. THE EXISTING METHODS OF TAXATION. 



( Continued from page 17.) 



DISTINCTION between " Real " and " Personal " Property 

 Artificial and not Natural. As a further help to the 

 understanding of the subject, it is important to here call attention 

 to the circumstance that the distinction between real and personal 

 property is, to a very great extent, an artificial and not a natural one, 

 .and that there is not only no common or accepted rule for their 

 definition and distinction, but, on the contrary, a great diversity of 

 statute enactment by the different States of the Federal Union and 

 by foreign governments on the subject. (For abundant illustrations 

 in proof of this statement, see Popular Science Monthly, vol. li, No. 

 5, pages 607, 609.) " The statute laws on the subject of taxation in 

 the United States," says Mr. Hillard, in his Law of Taxation, " is 

 as voluminous as the constitutional provisions are few and concise." 

 With a general similarity, the laws of the different States are very 

 diverse; and so numerous and frequent are the changes that the 

 author disclaims any responsibility in his book for the implied state- 

 ment that " the law of any particular State, however recent, is now 

 in force." 



The attempt, therefore, to recognize in a system of laws a dis- 

 tinction in respect to the so-called personal property that is perfectly 

 arbitrary, and which forty-eight sovereign States of the Federal 

 Union may alter at pleasure, is very likely to give a general result 

 somewhat akin to that obtained by an artist who, in painting a land- 

 scape, selected a cow as his fixed point of perspective. If the cow 

 had remained quiet, the picture might have been' satisfactory; but as 

 the cow walked off, the details of the picture were not harmonious. 



Value Relations of Land and Productive Capital. One 

 curious phenomenon attending the remarkable changes that have 

 taken place within the last half century in the conditions of pro- 

 duction and distribution of wealth, has been the more rapid increase 

 in all countries of high civilization of that portion of their national 

 wealth represented by the so-called personal property than in that 

 portion represented by the value of land. Thus, in Great Britain, 

 at the commencement of the present century, the value of land was 

 believed to represent about forty per cent of the aggregate wealth 

 or property of the kingdom. At the present time it probably does 



