PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



207 



tailed a loss in a single year of over $130,000,000, and in which 

 the taking of false oaths was at every step an essential feature, 

 constitutes a third; while of individual examples, which every 

 assessor of experience can detail, the record would be almost inter- 

 minable. 



During the past few years the low tone of commercial morality 

 in the United States has been a fact generally recognized and much 

 commented upon; but it has not, that we are aware, been made a 

 subject of inquiry by those to whom the guardianship of public 

 morals is particularly intrusted. How far the existing system of 

 laws relating to taxation national and State are justly charge- 

 able with the results to which reference has been made, or how 

 much in the division of responsibility is to be set down to the 

 account of those who violate the law, and how much to those who, 

 forewarned of the weakness of human nature, deliberately make 

 laws which especially lead men into temptation, are yet unsettled 

 questions. 



A point of great interest and importance in this connection, 

 though often overlooked, is that even if all the States of the Federal 

 Union should entirely exempt personal property within their ter- 

 ritory and jurisdiction from taxation, it would nevertheless, owing to 

 the dual nature of the Government of the United States, be subject 

 to a large measure of heavy and disproportionate taxation. Thus, 

 the expenditure of the Federal Government, which represents taxa- 

 tion, was in 1896, including the cost of revenue collection, in excess 

 of $445,000,000, not one cent of which was derived from taxes on 

 real estate.* The aggregate of annual taxation by States, counties, 

 cities, municipalities, and the District of Columbia for the same year 

 is estimated by reputable authorities to have been about $400,000,- 

 000, of which at least one fifth was assessed or was collected from 

 personal property. If real estate paid all the State taxes, personal 

 property therefore would still be paying all the United States Gov- 

 ernment taxes, or a large excess of its equitable share of any or all 

 national taxation. A claim that any personal property owner is 

 justified in protecting himself against such extortion in any and 

 every legal way has much, therefore, to be said in its favor. When 

 such protection can not be effected legally, he has only to leave the 

 State for others that are not extortionate oppressors of capital. But 

 who can not perceive on reflection that personal property (capital) 

 must be largely used by its owners and at fair rates at their residence; 

 and that the home of such capital will show the benefit in increased 

 local business, increased population, and increased value of real 



* Real estate pays no Federal Government tax. 



