Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/17

Rh despotic power, but it can not abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom." If this principle was recognized as the higher law in European states, it would be safe to say that the revenue collected from their income taxes would be exceedingly small.

It is also a very curious circumstance that an existing system of municipal or local taxation, which has proved itself to be most intelligent, satisfactory, and efficient for revenue, and most worthy of being studied as a model for adoption, has as yet almost entirely failed of recognition or consideration by any of the recent writers on taxation or authorities on general economic subjects on either side of the Atlantic.

Again, ignorance or willful disregard of the true principles of taxation in the United States has powerfully contributed to foster the idea among its people that they should look to Government for their support, rather than that the people should support the Government, The practical incorporation of this idea into the fiscal policy of the Government has enabled a comparatively few persons to accumulate vast fortunes, has built up class distinctions, promoted popular discontent, and established a precedent for state socialism. Figs, however, can no more be gathered from thistles than class legislation, whether it be the rich against the poor or the poor against the rich, can be looked to for the perpetuation of popular government or the spread of democratic virtues. The evil of bad taxation is not merely economic, it is moral, and no argument can change its character.

To defective elementary education, in respect to the principles of taxation, may also be attributed the almost universal disassociation in the minds of the masses between the payment of taxes and the benefit, or profitable return consequent upon such payment. The youth of the United States, and doubtless of all other countries, as he grows up, finds roads and bridges, schools, courts and churches, commercial regulation and police—in short, all national. State, or municipal machinery—provided for him almost as freely as air, sunshine, or water. He has but to live to experience their benefits or discomforts. At home these subjects, regarded as dry and abstruse, are rarely if ever selected as topics for social conversation, and, if casually brought up, are discussed merely in reference to their bearing upon the interests of this or that political party. The sons, therefore, of even refined and intelligent American families, so far as home education and influences are concerned, enter upon their duties as citizens, with votes and voices for determining the policy of their government, with not merely an entire ignorance of the principles or methods by which the cost of the benefits accruing from such policy are defrayed, but with a disinclination to receive instruction on the