Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/78

66 for great national emergencies, in which the necessity of a large additional revenue overrules all objections."

Mr. Gladstone, speaking in 1853, also said, "I believe it" (an income tax) "does more than any other tax to demoralize and corrupt the people" And Mr. Disraeli subsequently in Parliament expressed his agreement with Mr. Gladstone by saying, "The odious features of this tax can not by any means be removed or modified"; and with these opinions nearly all educated financiers and economists are in complete unison, except a comparatively few persons who, educated in Germany, have embraced the idea that because income taxes are effectively collected in countries having a despotic form of government, they can be equally collected in countries under a popular government.

In support of these conclusions attention is asked to the following historical evidence. It is well known that one of the principal causes which led to the great French Revolution was the inequality (class exemptions) and multiplicity of taxes; and one of the first acts of the National Assembly of 1789 was to repeal all inquisitorial and arbitrary taxes of every name and nature; and this repeal was based on the report of a committee of some of the most eminent members of the Convention—La Rochefoucauld and Talleyrand being of the number—which commenced with the following proposition: "Every system of taxation which necessitates personal and arbitrary inquisitions for its execution is inconsistent with the maintenance of a free people" And although, from that day to this, France, by reason of a national debt greater than that ever borne by any other nation, has been compelled to resort to almost every expedient for obtaining revenue, it has, theoretically at least, endeavored to maintain a system of general taxation not inconsistent with the above principle.

Under the head of indirect taxation, however, which includes the general direction of the stamp tax, "domainal public land" revenues, customs, duties on imports, salt and sugar taxes, and monopolization of the manufacture of powder and the sale of tobacco and matches, the so-called communes of France have a right to "levy a tax of three per cent on the annual income (interests, dividends, etc.) of personal property, such as French or foreign securities, shares, bonds issued