Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/341

 TAXATION THROUGH MONOPOLY 319 shape, by establishing lotteries in which the contributors as a whole were certain to lose. Many European countries limited the privilege of so doing to the state, and some instances are yet to be found. In Prussia the estimated yield for the year 1890-1 was 8,291,500 marks. Saxony, Hamburg, and Spain also derive a revenue by this means, and the Austrian lottery was estimated to give twenty-one and a half million florins for 1889. Italy is, however, the most prominent instance; in 1889-90 the computed gross yield was 76,300,000 lire. The objections, both economic and social, to any gain of the kind are so strong that it has been abolished in most countries,  and will probably soon disappear from those in which it is at present retained; but the form of monopoly has in itself nothing injurious; it is rather the state recognition of a vice peculiarly opposed to the economic virtue of honest work, and easily fostered into luxuriant growth, that is open to criticism. From the purely financiaI point of view the more refined lottery systems depending on combinations of numbers are defective in consequence of their yield being uncertain. The state is exactly in the position of the banker of the gambling table. Thus 1885 was a bad year for the Italian lottery, 1886 a good one, The simple method of prizes arranged in classes is so far safer in its returns, but it appeals less powerfully to the gambling spirit on the prevalence of which the whole trade depends for its continuance. 2 TH POST OFFICE. The preceding cases of monopoly have been mainly taken from one particular kind of taxation, viz., what in the terminology of German financial science is known as ' taxation on consumption' (Verbrauchbesteuerung). Salt, tobacco, opium, and alcohol, though the first and last named have many industrial uses, are principally employed in directly contributing to human enjoyment; while the lottery tax is only removed from the same class by the absence of a material object to be used up in the process. It however technically belongs to the class of 'taxes on acts,' and is therefore the most fitting introduction to the--in this respect similar--tax that we have now to consider. The historical development of the postal service, varying as it did in different countries, has yet led in all to the establishment of a government monopoly. The political reasons that prompted the establishment of state post offices have been supplemented by economic ones, so that the only open question is with respect to  England 1826, Hesse 1832, Sweden 1840, Bavaria 1861, Switzerland 1865. De Parieu, vol. iii. pp. 388--9. g Cf. Cohn, pp. 372 76; Alessio, vol. ii. pp. 647, et seq. ee