To Us,
As I Conceive, The Science Of Taxation, In Which We Certainly Ought
To Be Great, Has Come Gradually.
We have learned by slow lessons
what taxes will be productive, under what circumstances they will be
most productive, and at what point they will be made unproductive by
their own weight.
We have learned what taxes may be levied so as to
afford funds themselves, without injuring the proceeds of other
taxes, and we know what taxes should be eschewed as being specially
oppressive to the general industry and injurious to the well-being
of the nation. This has come of much practice, and even we, with
all our experience, have even got something to learn. But the
public men in the States who are now devoting themselves to this
matter of taxing the people have, as yet, no such experience. That
they have inclination enough for the work is, I think, sufficiently
demonstrated by the national tax bill, the wording of which is now
before me, and which will have been passed into law before this
volume can be published. It contains a list of every taxable
article on the earth or under the earth. A more sweeping catalogue
of taxation was probably never put forth. The Americans, it has
been said by some of us, have shown no disposition to tax themselves
for this war; but before the war has as yet been well twelve months
in operation, a bill has come out with a list of taxation so
oppressive that it must, as regards many of its items, act against
itself and cut its own throat. It will produce terrible fraud in
its evasion, and create an army of excise officers who will be as
locusts over the face of the country. Taxes are to be laid on
articles which I should have said that universal consent had
declared to be unfit for taxation. Salt, soap, candles, oil, and
other burning fluids, gas, pins, paper, ink, and leather, are to be
taxed. It was at first proposed that wheat flour should be taxed,
but that item has, I believe, been struck out of the bill in its
passage through the House. All articles manufactured of cotton,
wool, silk, worsted, flax, hemp, jute, India-rubber, gutta-percha,
wood (?), glass, pottery wares, leather, paper, iron, steel, lead,
tin, copper, zinc, brass, gold and silver, horn, ivory, bone,
bristles, wholly or in part, or of other materials, are to be taxed -
provided always that books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, and
reviews shall not be regarded as manufactures. It will be said that
the amount of taxation to be levied on the immense number of
manufactured articles which must be included in this list will be
light, the tax itself being only 3 per cent. ad valorem. But with
reference to every article, there will be the necessity of
collecting this 3 per cent. As regards each article that is
manufactured, some government official must interfere to appraise
its value and to levy the tax. Who shall declare the value of a
barrel of wooden nutmegs; or how shall the excise officer get his
tax from every cobbler's stall in the country? And then tradesmen
are to pay licenses for their trades - a confectioner 2l., a tallow-
chandler 2l., a horse dealer 2l. Every man whose business it is to
sell horses shall be a horse dealer. True. But who shall say
whether or no it be a man's business to sell horses? An apothecary
2l., a photographer 2l., a peddler 4l., 3l., 2l., or 1l., according
to his mode of traveling. But if the gross receipts of any of the
confectioners, tallow-chandlers, horse dealers, apothecaries,
photographers, peddlers, or the like do not exceed 200l. a year,
then such tradesmen shall not be required to pay for any license at
all. Surely such a proviso can only have been inserted with the
express view of creating fraud and ill blood! But the greatest
audacity has, I think, been shown in the levying of personal taxes, -
such taxes as have been held to be peculiarly disagreeable among
us, and have specially brought down upon us the contempt of lightly-
taxed people, who, like the Americans, have known nothing of
domestic interference. Carriages are to be taxed, as they are with
us. Pianos also are to be taxed, and plate. It is not signified by
this clause that such articles shall pay a tax, once for all, while
in the maker's hands, which tax would no doubt fall on the future
owner of such piano or plate; in such case the owner would pay, but
would pay without any personal contact with the tax-gatherer. But
every owner of a piano or of plate is to pay annually according to
the value of the articles he owns. But perhaps the most audacious
of all the proposed taxes is that on watches. Every owner of a
watch is to pay 4s. a year for a gold watch and 2s. a year for a
silver watch! The American tax-gatherers will not like to be
cheated. They will be very keen in searching for watches. But who
can say whether they or the carriers of watches will have the best
of it in such a hunt. The tax-gatherers will be as hounds ever at
work on a cold scent. They will now be hot and angry, and then dull
and disheartened. But the carriers of watches who do not choose to
pay will generally, one may predict, be able to make their points
good.
With such a tax bill - which I believe came into action on the 1st of
May, 1862 - the Americans are not fairly open to the charge of being
unwilling to tax themselves. They have avoided none of the
irritating annoyances of taxation, as also they have not avoided, or
attempted to lighten for themselves, the dead weight of the burden.
The dead weight they are right to endure without flinching; but
their mode of laying it on their own backs justifies me, I think, in
saying that they do not yet know how to obtain access to their own
means.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 106 of 140
Words from 107017 to 108047
of 142339
