Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/381

Rh right to a seat, or the brief sense of pleasure which the purchaser receives in return, and which he can not perpetuate without renewed buying, and can not transfer to another person, be entitled to be called property? "When socialists and communists," says Professor Macleod, "wish to destroy property, it is not the material things they wish to destroy, but the exclusive right which private persons have in them." If this assertion is warranted, the question is pertinent, Why is it, when socialists or communists have the opportunity to destroy property, they rarely proceed against property over which private persons have exclusive control—like private dwellings—but rather against monuments or buildings, and constructions which are acknowledged to be public as respects use and control? Again, Professor Macleod further holds that not only is the right to a thing, which is not at the time of sale in existence, but is to be acquired in the future, property; but also that a mere promise to deliver a commodity is property of the same general nature as money and an actuality.

—Any review of this general subject of "double taxation" would be imperfect that failed to particularly call attention to a decision of the United States Supreme Court which, although of the first importance as touching the correct administration of a free and intelligent government, has thus far attracted little attention, even among members of the American bar.

The subject in question, furthermore, illustrates the historical principle that changes in free governments have more often been effected through the decisions of their highest courts than by direct legislation. Thus it is known to all who have examined the theory and practice of local taxation in the United States, that a hundred years ago or less, the lawmakers of England entertained very generally the same opinion in regard to this subject which is yet popularly accepted in this country, namely, that in order to secure exact justice and equality it is essential to attempt to subject all property of the taxpayer—real and personal, tangible and intangible, visible and invisible—to one uniform rate of valuation and assessment; although it must then, as now, have been evident to every one on reflection that, in order to attempt to do this, it would be necessary to endow the assessors with more than mortal powers of perception, so as to enable them to see what was invisible, and measure what was intangible and incorporeal (debts and credits, for example); and that, in default thereof, any practical application of this theory must result in rank absurdity and injustice. And yet it is curious to note that the change in English taxation, when it came about, was not due to any such process of reasoning on the part of the people, or to