Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/311

Rh This was the idea of Alexander Hamilton, who in the early days of the republic favored state interference with the pursuits of the people to a large extent, as the best method by which domestic manufacturing should be stimulated by the state. This idea, however, found no more favor with the parties specially interested at that time than it would at present; inasmuch as a brief practical experience would so soon demonstrate the smallness of the revenue necessary to be raised by honest taxation for the direct maintenance of an industry by the state, in comparison with the amount raised, for the most part by inequitable and unjust taxation for the support of that form of interference by the state with production which goes under the name of "protection," as to make any long toleration of the latter policy by a free people exceedingly unlikely.

—Attention is next asked to the generic difference between the "taxing" and "police" powers of the state (to which a brief reference has been made already), and to the incongruities and governmental abuses that inevitably result from a lack of full recognition of this fact. The object of the taxing power is to raise money to defray the expenditures of the state, and proof and argument seem conclusive that it can not be legitimately used for anything else. By the power of police is understood the internal' regulation of the affairs of the state in the interest of good order. The idea, therefore, of resorting to taxation for the purpose of protecting individuals against their own foolishness, enforcing morality, preventing social evils, or as an instrumentality for the punishment of crime, is to pervert an agency from the one sole purpose for which it can rightfully exist to another less fit and not warranted by necessity, and presupposes an entire misconception of the principles of a free government; and all perversions of this power are certain to entail evils greater than the abuses which it is devised to remedy. If the prosecution of any trade or occupation, or the manufacture and use of any product constitutes an evil of sufficient magnitude to call for adverse legislation, let the state proceed against it directly, courageously, and with determination. To impose taxes upon an evil in any degree short of its prohibition is in effect to recognize and license this evil. To demand a portion of the gains of a person practicing fraud, may be an effectual method for putting an end to his knavery by making his practices unprofitable; but it would be, all the same, a very poor way for a state to adopt as a means