158 AMERICAN FARMS. 



ports on merchandise were levied, it is true, for revenue 

 purposes ; but a tariff, as a chief medium in holding 

 together a system of government — a sort of despotism by 

 jugglery, — has, strange to say, its highest development in 

 modern ages. 



Through indirect taxation, alliances between selfish 

 interests having the command of wealth and govern- 

 ments with matchless fondness for attachments which 

 insure possession of abundant money resources, are 

 easily formed. Thus combines, monopolies, and other 

 moneyed interests become ascendant in government. 

 Such a rule brings the liberties of the people into actual 

 peril. Farmers have much to fear from the sway of 

 the plutocrat. Some one very correctly remarks : " A 

 plutocracy has its throne in cities ; an aristocracy in 

 the country." Even an aristocracy is in sympathy with 

 the great rural classes. Moreover, with the country 

 shorn of its political power, democracy is a delusion. It 

 follows, that the farmers, of all others, are imperilled by 

 a revenue system which secures the alliance of wealth 

 and government. But more of this elsewhere. 



The first great canon of taxation laid down by all 

 eminent economists is to the effect that the volume of 

 taxation be rigidly limited to the actual necessities of 

 the state. The violation in America of this first rule is 

 to be laid principally to the door of our system of in- 

 direct taxation. Politicians have learned that by this 

 system " the fowl is plucked without crying out." Tax- 

 ation always becomes so adjusted as to bear upon those 

 least likely to rebel against it. That the farmers are they 

 of America who have never yet united their forces to 

 resist this system of oppression is patent to all who have 

 given the subject any attention. 



