Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/401

Rh defended on any sound principles of free constitutional government; and is simply a manifestation of tyrannical power, under whatever form of government it may be enforced. The great republican principle of equality before the law, and constitutional law itself, alike preclude any exemption of income derived from like property.

M. Thiers, in his work on the Rights of Property, thus forcibly condemns confiscation under the name or form of a graduated income tax: "Proportionality," he says, "is a principle, but progression is a hateful despotism. . . . To exact a tenth from one, a fifth from another, and a third from another is pure despotism—it is robbery."

Finally, the principle involved in this question of discriminating income taxation is one that affects the foundation and continued existence of every free government—namely, the equality of all men before the law. Any exemption whatever, under an income tax, be it small or great, except to the absolutely indigent, is purely arbitrary; and the principle once allowed may be carried to any extent. Any exemption of any portion of the same class of property or incomes is an act of charity which every patriotic American citizen ought to reject upon principle and with scorn, except under circumstances of great want and destitution. Equality and manhood, therefore, demand and require uniformity of burden in whatever is the subject of taxation.

—The subject of taxation in the new Government which it was proposed to establish in place of the colonial system which the Revolution had supplanted, constituted one of the most important and salient points of interest in the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, and was the cause of much difference of opinion among its members and earnest contention between the States. The great source of weakness of the Confederation was its inability to levy taxes of any kind for the support of its Government. To raise revenue it was obliged to make requisitions upon the States which were respected or disregarded at their pleasure. Great embarrassments followed the consequent inability to obtain the necessary funds to carry on the Government. One of the principal objects of the proposed new Government was to obviate this defect of the Confederacy by conferring authority upon the new Government by which taxes could be directly laid whenever desired. Great difficulty in accomplishing this object was found to exist. The seaboard States were unwilling to give up their right to lay duties upon imports, which were their chief source of revenue. The inland States, on the other hand, were unwilling to make any agreement for the levying of taxes directly upon real and personal property, the