PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 203 



modern times so large a part of the personal property of every civil- 

 ized community. 



In the State of New York, where the letter of the tax laws in 

 respect to the subjects of taxation is nearly the same as in Massa- 

 chusetts and Ohio, but the administration less stringent, and where 

 the aggregate of personal property nearly or fully equals in value 

 the aggregate of real property, the proportion of the former returned 

 for taxation is not in excess of one fifth of the total assessed valua- 

 tion; while in the great city of New York, with a population of 

 over a million, not one per cent of her citizens stand upon the books 

 of the assessors as possessing any personal property subject to taxa- 

 tion other than shares in banking institutions. 



In Wisconsin the State appears to have drifted into the same 

 condition of things as in New York, and the attempt to tax personal 

 property has been practically abandoned, except in the small villages 

 and rural districts. In Georgia, which is reported to be well served 

 by its taxing officials, its comptroller asserts that in respect to the 

 mere article of merchandise which can be seen and handled, not 

 fifty per cent is returned for taxation, and that in the city of Savan- 

 nah in 1886 not ten watches were subjected to taxation. 



To complete this record of experience it is desirable to add that 

 there is not a single economist or financier of note, either in the 

 United States or Europe, who upholds the " infinitesimal " or " gen- 

 eral property " tax as a desirable or essential feature of any fiscal sys- 

 tem, its characterization by M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the celebrated French 

 economist, being that " a cruder instrumentality of taxation has 

 rarely been devised." 



Again, in every country on the globe where a direct tax on per- 

 sonal property in the hands of individuals has been laid, the system 

 has exhibited the same features of badness. No experience in any 

 country has suggested any practical improvements of it. It has 

 never been improved; it has never grown better; it has always, 

 under all circumstances, exhibited a tendency to grow worse. It is 

 a fact creditable to the superior intelligence of other lands that it 

 no longer is found in any civilized country on the globe, the United 

 States alone excepted; and in this country it is no longer found in 

 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and perhaps some other States. 



Prof. E. A. K. Seligman, of Columbia University, who has 

 written much on this subject, sums up the result of his investigations 

 in the following language : " It will be no exaggeration to say that 

 the general property tax in the United States is a dismal failure. 

 Every country also, with the exception of Holland and the States of 

 the Federal Union, has abandoned this system of tax as something 

 wholly impractical. In recent years in both England and France 



