Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/191

Rh And yet Mr. Carey's name, more than that of any other citizen of the United States, is identified with a system of raising revenue which is based exclusively on indirect taxation.

Mr. Henry George, in one of his essays, also thus forcibly makes clear a leading characteristic of the indirect taxes levied by the Federal Government: "Propose," he says, "to abolish, or even reduce, one of these taxes, and Washington will be filled with lobbyists begging and working for its extension. What does this mean? It means that these taxes yield revenue to private parties as well as to the Government."

Carlyle was not far out of the way in characterizing legislators who advocate indirect taxation as having a purpose, "that those who are not hungry should suppress those who are. The pigs are to die—i. e., be subject to taxation—no conceivable help for that; but we, by God's blessing, will at least keep down their squealing!"

The question of the relative merits of the two systems of taxation under consideration, has long been since the days of Jeremy Bentham a subject of discussion, with a trend of popular sentiment unmistakably in favor of indirect, or it should rather be said in opposition to direct taxation.

What satisfactory explanation can be given for a conclusion so clearly adverse to public interest? John Stuart Mill has attempted it as follows: "The feeling is not grounded on the merits of the case, and is of a puerile kind. An Englishman dislikes not so much the payment as the act of payment. He dislikes seeing the face of the tax collector and being subjected to his peremptory demand. Perhaps, too, the money which he is required to pay directly out of his pocket is the only taxation which he is quite sure that he pays at all. That a tax of two shillings per pound on tea, or of three shillings per bottle on wine, raises the price of each pound of tea and bottle of wine which he consumes by that and more than that amount can not