Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/63

Rh without argument. Adam Smith held to the opinion, "founded," as he says, "on the experience of all nations, that the certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, of so great importance that a very considerable degree of inequality is not near so great an evil as a small degree of uncertainty." The evil of uncertainty does not, however, often characterize the tax systems of the United States, except in the case of taxation by the Federal Government of imports, when rates (customs) are sometimes held for considerable periods in abeyance by reason of political antagonisms of legislators. One of the most remarkable example of this occurred during the months from December, 1893, to August, 1894, when the uncertainty as to the prospective rates on imported merchandise occasioned great stagnation of business in the United States, with inevitable great contingent losses. Another even more striking illustration of the evils of uncertainty in taxation is to be found in the recent (1897) proposition to subject merchandise, imported in strict conformity with established laws and rates at the time of importation, to the retroactive incidence of increased taxes, not certain but prospective in respect to rates, and not enacted or embodied in the form of statute laws. Such action is in the nature of an arbitrary fine or penalty, and not taxation, and probably does not find a parallel in the history of any civilized nation, and would not now be tolerated in any of the most despotic governments of Europe.

The term proportional, which is largely used in constitutional provisions and in statutes relating to taxation, has, however, a meaning so much broader and of such greater significance than is generally attributed to it by law-makers and even law interpreters, that it is worth while to institute an inquiry and endeavor to understand clearly what it does mean. Scientifically considered, it means the making of the burden of taxation equal upon all subjects of immediate competition. This principle is one of the prime essentials of taxation, and when it is violated the act of taking, or the enforced contribution, is not entitled to be considered taxation, but becomes at once an arbitrary spoliation or confiscation. Thus, to illustrate: Suppose it were proposed to tax the stock in trade of red-haired men five per cent, and those of red-nosed men ten percent; or, as was provided in the income-tax law enacted by the Congress of the United States of 1894, which exempted incomes below four thousand dollars per annum from taxation and taxed all above that sum two per cent; or to do as actually once was done in England, under an income-tax law enacted in 1691, tax Catholics at rates double those imposed on Protestants; it seems clear that such transactions could not involve any principle or be regarded in any other light than the mere arbitrary and despotic exercise of power; or the making of