Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/193

Rh predicated. Thus the argument and evidence are complete that it is not a wise, humane, or perhaps a moral policy for a state created or maintained for the purpose of promoting the interests of its people to adopt a system of indirect taxation for the raising of revenue; and, furthermore, that it is contrary to human nature for a people to desire or be willing to pay more for any service or commodity than it is intrinsically worth; or, what is the same thing, perform more work in return for the same than is a fair equivalent. And yet both governments and the people in all countries and at all times (including the present) have shown a preference for this system of taxation over any other.

One explanation of this curious inconsistency is as follows: It is and ever has been the aim of all governments to avoid responsibility and occasion for popular criticism in respect to their financial policy; and a direct tax is an annual reminder to their citizens or subjects of the burden of government, and prompts them to hold the government to a strict accountability. Under a free or popular form of government a general system of direct taxation would practically call for an annual judgment of the voters on the fiscal policy of an administration in power, and such a tightening of the purse-strings as would reverse such policy in case of its popular disapproval. But with a system of indirect taxation, as a tariff on imports, a government can undertake the most unnecessary and extravagant measures and obtain revenue sufficient to defray its contingent expenditures without general popular disapproval.

Indeed, the best defense that can be offered for the continued resort to indirect taxation is, that with the present large demands on the part of all civilized states for revenue to meet increasing fiscal obligations, mainly incurred for war expenditures, past and present, and the unwillingness of the people to pay direct taxes, it would be practically impossible to maintain the modern government without large contributions from people of limited resources; and that this purpose can only be accomplished by taxing them indirectly. On the other hand, it may be replied that if direct taxation was alone made the agency for obtaining revenue, unnecessarily large expenditures through the resistance of the masses would not be possible. In like manner, if the present indirect taxes levied on imports by the United States were to be replaced by direct taxes, collected in money or in kind from purchasers for final consumption, on whom the burden in both cases finally rests—if every person buying silk or sugar were stopped by a government tax gatherer at the door of the place of purchase and thirty per cent of his purchases taken in kind in one case and fifty per cent in the other in payment for taxes, it is safe to say that such a system would not continue operative any longer