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.
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