his promissory note to B for $i,oco for money borrowed. While 

 B holds this note without a particle of security and of course 

 doubtful value, it is subject to taxation. But let A secure this 

 same note b}^ mortgage on real estate, making it fully worth a 

 hundred cents on the dollar and it is exempt from taxation. 

 Could the law of taxation be more absurd than this? But look 

 at the injustice of it. A has bought a farm for $10,000. He is 

 able to make a cash payment of but $2,oco. He owes for all the 

 rest. He is taxed the full assessed value of his farm. B with 

 $10,000, or even $50,000, at interest secured by mortgage, pays 

 only a poll tax. This was not the law for a hundred years after 

 the constitution was made. Ought it longer to be the law of 

 Massachusetts? Will the farmers and real estate owners of the 

 Commonwealth long submit to this sneaking exemption. The 

 future will tell. 



There is another exemption in the Statute, a relic of the 

 tyranny of the past. In the early days of the State the Church 

 was maintained, like the School, at the expense of the public, in 

 other words, there was the established or State Church ; as the 

 School house and Highway are exempt from taxation because 

 they are the property of the public, so the Church was exempt 

 for the same reason. When the Church was divorced from the 

 State the reason ceased to exist and the Church should, with 

 proud independence, have taken its place with the honest tax- 

 pa3'ers. I make no attack upon the Church. The clustered 

 spires of the village rising white amid green foliage of the trees 

 are everywhere a thing of beaut}- ; but to my eye the}^ would be 

 more beautiful if they paid their equal and proportionate share 

 of the burden of maintaining the government that gives them 

 everywhere within its domain the largest liberty of existence. 

 Understand, the Statute does not exempt the Christian Church 

 alone. The Church of the Christian, the Synagogue of the Jew, 

 the Temple of the Mormon, the Mosque of the Moslem, the 

 Pagoda of the Celestial, everything that calls itself religion can 

 claim exemption for its buildings, land on which the}^ stand and 

 furniture, even though the amount rises as it does in some single 

 instances in the Commonwealth to a valuation greater than 

 that of the wealthy town of Great Barrington. One of the most 

 sagacious and patriotic Presidents of the United States, Gen. 

 Grant, called attention, in his annual message to Congress more 

 than twenty years ago, to the immense amount of property that 



