Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/180

170 contributing to the support of the government, and this argument may be amplified and illustrated as follows: Thus, there is no citizen, be he ever so humble, who is not vitally interested in the preservation and welfare of the civil society of which he is a member; and it is of the first importance, more especially as the tendency of the age seems to be antagonistic, that each member of society should be encouraged to realize at all times his personal interest in the well-being of the State. To the rich man society comes and exacts a contribution in some proportion to his means, and as a consequence he has inducements to directly interest himself in the fiscal management of the government. To the poor man, who is otherwise rarely directly confronted with the tax gatherer, society comes also, and, in common with all citizens of a certain age, asks a very small annual contribution for the support of the State, because each citizen is interested in its existence and welfare, has a measure of responsibility resting upon him, and should be made to realize that responsibility. In the fact, therefore, that the poll tax touches directly every citizen and is an effective agency for awakening him to a sense of his political duties and responsibilities, and so better qualifies him for the exercise of the right of suffrage, is to be found the true reason for the incorporation of a small annual poll tax into every correct system of State taxation.

As has already been pointed out, a poll tax, having regard solely to the person and not to his property, is the only tax to which the term personal can be rightfully applied. It is the essence also of every free and just government that every person—the most humble as well as the most exalted—is equal before the law, and has a right to invoke the sovereignty of the State in all its fullness for the protection of his person. Keeping these two points in view, it would further appear that a poll tax assessed equally upon all citizens, and free from all discrimination, represents the most perfect equality of service, and is the only tax which a citizen can pay which can be regarded in the light of a reciprocal for the service which the State renders to him in protecting his person, all other taxes being in respect to property or business.

As the Constitution of the United States also excludes from representation "Indians not taxed," it would seem to imply that its authors regarded the exercise of suffrage by a citizen that was not a pauper and paid no direct tax, as an anomaly not likely to occur under a government founded upon equal public rights and responsibilities, and also that a citizen who did not pay any direct tax to the State was not likely to have any more correct idea or measure of his true relation to the State than a wild Indian.