2. The assessment of personalty holds out constant and very powerful temptations to defraud the state by concealing the knowledge of every thing which the tax payer believes cannot easily be discovered. This is so well understood that it is scarcely expected that citizens will voluntarily state what they possess, or that officers will make much if any effort to discover. Indeed, the assessment of personal property reaches so small a proportion of the amount really protected by govern ment, that it might almost be said that laws for the purpose remain on the statute books rather as incentives to evasion and fraud in the dealings of the citizen with the state than as a means of realizing a revenue for public purposes.

3. Such taxes are usually unjust in their discrimination between residents and non-residents who enjoy the same protection of the laws. This will be manifest from an illustration: If money is loaned at ten per centum, and the tax upon credits is one per centum of the capital, the resident capitalist may count upon an income of nine per centum upon his investments. But the non-resident, who could not be taxed in the state upon his loans which are made there and protected and enforced by its laws, would, upon the like investment, count upon ten per centum; and this difference would not only be a serious discrimination against the citizen, but it would, and does, encourage further evasions and frauds, and particularly the loaning of moneys in the names of non-residents in order to escape taxation. It also presents an inducement to citizens, whose investments do not require personal attention, to take up their residence abroad; any saving of the tax being equivalent to an addition of that amount to their incomes.

4. Taxation of personalty leads to duplicate taxation in various ways. Other taxes besides those by valuation reach such property, being laid in the shape of dutics, excise and license fees, etc.; and, moreover, when property is moved from one jurisdiction into another, where the time fixed for assess

it is determined that every man shall pay a fifteenth part of his goods to the king, then commissioners come forth, and he that in sight of men, in his cattle, corn, sheep and other goods, is worth an hundred marks or an hundred pound, will set himself at ten pound; he will be worth to the king but after ten pound. Tell me, now, whether this be theft or no?"

ment is different, it may for that reason be twice assessed for a tax on valuation for the same period of time.

5. Such taxation requires a large addition to the force of revenue officers which otherwise would be sufficient, and it renders necessary more frequent assessments than would be requisite were taxation confined to that property, or those subjects, which are more permanent in characteristics and ownership. To make it just, it is generally thought necessary that the tax payer's debts should be deducted; and this complicates the difficulty of ascertaining what his estate is, and leaves every man, in effect, to make his own assessment, or subjects him to the arbitrary and capricious action of the assessors. These are objections which every one feels and appreciates; others, which are more obscure, need not be mentioned. A tax on land is not open to these objections. Whenever the law seeks to tax land and personalty with equality, the general result is, that land pays much the greater proportion of the tax, because this can all be reached, and all be taxed; no inquisitorial proceedings are required to discover it, and no frauds or evasions can conceal it from view. These and other reasons have led some political economists to advocate the omission of personalty from the customary taxation by value, and the raising of the ordinary state revenue by a tax laid exclusively on land and a few other subjects which, like land, are open to constant public observation and inspection, and in respect to which neither would harsh sifting processes be required, nor evasions be practicable, nor frauds invited. Such a tax, it is claimed, while nominally falling upon a few, would in fact be diffused through the whole community, and collected from all by being added to the price of what is produced and distributed by the classes taxed, just as we have found that a tax upon any common article of consumption is paid in the end by the consumer,

1 Many statutes leave the assessors to estimate the personal estate, but allow the tax payer to reduce an excessive valuation by a staterent under oath. Under the almost universal custom of valuing property at from onefourth to one-third its estimated value, this privilege to the tax payer becomes of no avail. A man having an estate of $30,000 may be taxed upon that sum, and be without redress, because he cannot make oath that he is not worth so much, when if the general valuation is at one-third only, he should be taxed on but $10,000.

sumers.

and is no more burdensome to the dealer who nominally pays it than it is to any other member of the community of conAdam Smith declared that "no tax can ever reduce for any considerable time the rate of profit in any particular trade, which must always keep its level with other trades in its neighborhood." And, indeed, in this country, during and after the great civil war of 1861-5, it was generally found that a heavy tax upon any particular article of consumption gave the business that produced it a new and vigorous impulse of prosperity.2

Taxes on Amusements. These constitute a very considerable source of income to the cities and villages of the country, and sometimes to the state itself. When the amusements are of a public nature, like theatrical and other exhibitions and shows, concerts, games of skill or chance, publicly performed, whether for profit or otherwise, races, etc., they seem to be as proper subjects of taxation as property or ordinary business. In fact such a tax is in the nature of a tax on luxuries, and therefore as unobjectionable as a tax can well be. The limit to the right to tax amusements, if any exists, has never been judicially pointed out, but when the public are invited to share them the right must be clear. On the other hand, it would seem that strictly private and family amusements ought to be considered wholly exempt, except, possibly, when they involve such expense as to be beyond the enjoyment of the people generally, and for that reason to be properly taxable as luxuries.

The foregoing by no means embraces all the subjects of taxation; some others will be referred to as we proceed, but the

1 Wealth of Nations, b. v, ch. 11, p. 11, art. 4.

2 Mr. David A. Wells has treated this general subject with ability in many publications. A pamphlet embodying the remarks of Mr. Isaac Sherman before the New York assembly committee of ways and means, October, 1874, is exceedingly instructive and valuable. It is highly probable that if personalty were wholly exempted from taxation by value, the burden of state taxes would be no more unequal than now, and that the general tone of public morality, on the score of taxation, escaping the schooling in evasions which is now had, would be higher. In our enumeration of taxes we have not included charges for postage. These, though sometimes called taxes, are in this country looked upon rather as reasonable charges for a branch of transportation which the government undertakes. They are not burdens upon the people, because they regularly fall below the cost.

enumeration here made may be sufficient for our present purposes. Even marriages have sometimes been taxed; though as a rule the fees imposed in the case of marriages have been only such as were supposed sufficient to cover the cost of proper regulations.1

1 In the British internal revenue law in force near the close of the great wars with Bonaparte, marriage licenses were taxed ten shillings if ordinary and five pounds if special. The marriage certificate was also taxed five shillings. That law was very carefully prepared, with a view to producing as much revenue as possible without serious hardships. The discriminations against luxuries were properly very considerable. Thus, the keeper of one pleasure horse was taxed 21. 17s. 6d., but for two he was charged 91. 4s., and for every additional horse 67. more, or thereabouts. One carriage with four wheels was taxed 127., and two, 261. For one male servant the tax was 21. 8s., for ten it was 627. No tax was charged on incomes less than 507. ; from that to 1507. a gradually increasing tax was imposed, and incomes above 150l. paid ten per cent. Occupations and legal instruments were specially taxed; the taxes on indentures of apprenticeship ranged from 15s. up to 501., and articles of clerkship in the office of an attorney or solicitor in the higher courts were taxed 1207. The window tax was 6s. 6d. on a house with six windows, and 347. 10s. on one with fifty.

CHAPTER II.

THE NATURE OF THE POWER TO TAX.

In the creation of three distinct departments of the government, and the apportionment of power between them, the authority to tax necessarily falls to the legislative. This is manifest from the slightest consideration of what taxation is. It is the making of rules and regulations under which the necessary revenues for all the needs of government are to be apportioned among the people and collected from them. While the principles of the British constitution remained unsettled and in dispute, the authority to lay and collect taxes was claimed for the executive, but only as a branch of the supreme authority, which was his by divine right, to rule at discretion.' When this arrogant claim was repudiated and abandoned, it became one of the most inflexible principles of government that the executive could levy no taxes whatsoever except in the execution of laws that had been made for his observance. Indeed, the principle goes farther than this. It is, that taxes are a grant of the people who are taxed, and the grant must be made by the immediate representatives of the people. All revenue laws in Great Britain must, therefore, originate with the popular house of parliament; a body very tenacious of its privileges, and disposed to class as revenue laws whatever will, even indirectly, bring revenue to the state. Following this

1" This power," said the attorney-general in Hampden's Case, "is innate in the person of an absolute king, and in the person of the kings of England. All magistracy, it is of nature; and obedience and subjection, it is of nature. This power is not any way derived from the people, but reserved unto the king when positive laws first began. For the king of England, he is an absolute monarch; nothing can be given to an absolute prince but what is inherent in his person. He can do no wrong. He is the sole judge, and we ought not to question him. Where the law trusts, we ought not to distrust." Hallam's Const. Hist., ch. 7; 3 State Trials, 826; Broom's Const. L., 306, and notes.

24 Inst., 29; 1 Bl. Com., 169; Vattel, b. 1, ch. 20, § 241. The house of lords is not permitted to amend money bills, and the commons deny the power even to reject them. See resolutions of 5th and 6th July, 1860.

It may be noted here, that while under the federal government the term most usually applied to the laws by which taxes are laid and collected is