Whatever the causes for the persistence of injustice and double dealing in financial administration, one thing is certain, - that these evils are not due to the absence of enlightened inquiry into the nature of fiscal problems. In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man in the same manner as it has done in the natural body for remedying those of his sloth and intemperance.” “If a nation,” said he, “could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could have prospered.
Adam Smith, the sagacious father of political economy, saw the situation in his day, and was sad, but the consolation that he offered then is about all we have to-day. Had the Lord questioned Mephistopheles upon the subject of taxation exclusively, the verdict of “ herzlich schlecht” would have needed but little qualification. The millionaire é migré too frequently escapes his just contribution, while the widow’s mite and the orphan’s crust pay the very uttermost farthing. If, on the other hand, we look away from our Federal taxes to our system of state and local taxation, the crying inequalities of the latter are only too well known. The people, in whose interest the government supposedly is conducted, must be induced to pay their taxes in an unconscious condition, “ lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted ” to a belief in another than the dominant programme of expenditure.
Despite the incidental advantages such taxes afford in consulting the convenience of the payer as to the time and the amounts of particular payments, the great reason for the existence of these taxes in every country is their power to conceal from the governed the real cost of supporting the government. In the United States, for example, not far from half of the government’s total revenue is obtained by disguising taxes in the prices of merchandise, either duty-paid imports, or liquors and tobacco freighted with the weight of the internal revenue. Seriously considered, the justification offered for indirect taxes is a most curious commentary upon our system of selfgovernment. Instead of allowing the sovereign to blackmail the subject, we graciously permit the owner of personal property to determine the amount of his contribution to the public treasury, much as he might fix upon the gratuity to his waiter in a restaurant. Nor may we longer account as taxation the archaic methods in vogue in the land of the Grand Llama, where the tax-collector, happening upon the wayfarer, accosts him with complaints of the cruel rigor of the winter, and, after a minatory flourish of his matchlock, remarks, “Thy cloak, venerable brother.” Process like this is rendered unnecessary in civilized lands by the proper extension of indirect taxes. For, despite its historical identity with early taxation, we may no longer designate as taxation the habit of the Orient, where taxes are indistinguishable from blackmail, and where the rich disguise themselves in rags to escape the exaction of the publican. THE remark that Goldsmith in one of his essays lets drop apropos of the history of a tavern is essentially true of the history of taxation, - it “ is a true picture of human infirmity,” in which “ we see every age equally absurd and equally vicious.” If this seem too disparaging to the present age, consider for a moment the most obtrusive features of taxation in the world of to-day, or, rather, the most obtrusive features of the tax systems of the most progressive nations.
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