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.
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