as his power further grows, become periodic and compulsory, making him more despotic at the same time that it augments his kingdom. Continuance of this process increases his ability to enforce contributions, alike from his original subjects and from tributaries; while the necessity for supplies, now to defend his kingdoms, now to invade adjacent kingdoms, is ever made the plea for increasing his demands of established kinds and for making new ones. Under stress of the alleged needs, portions of their goods are taken from subjects whenever they are exposed to view for purpose of exchange. And as the primitive presents of property and labor, once voluntary and variable, but becoming compulsory and periodic, are eventually commuted to direct taxes; so those portions of the trades goods which were originally given for permission to trade, and then seized as of right, come eventually to be transferred into percentages of value paid as tolls and duties. But to the last as well as at first, and under free governments as under despotic ones, war continues to be the usual reason for imposing new taxes or increasing old ones, at the same time that the coercive organization, in past times developed by war, continues to be the means of exacting them."[1] Mr. Spencer further asserts that "in the early stages of social evolution nothing answering to revenue exists." These conclusions of Mr. Spencer seem, however, to be singularly imperfect, inasmuch as they do not appear to recognize that there can be such things as voluntary or beneficial taxes, or that society in order to exist would in the course of time institute taxation, even if there had been no war. He does, however, recognize that the increasing progress and complexity of civilization, by continually enlarging its sphere and functions, would continually necessitate an increase of taxation.
All such speculations and theories as to the origin and sphere of the rights of government in respect to appropriating the property of its subjects or citizens, although of philosophic interest, are, however, of no practical importance.[2] It is only necessary to recognize that in some form the organization or entity which we call the state exists for certain definite purposes, even though they be difficult of precise limitation; and to analyze the situation, as we find it, to obtain a satisfac-
- ↑ Abundant illustrations from historical or recent experiences of the successive stages of such assumed evolution of taxation are given by Mr. Spencer in the chapter On Revenue in his volume on Political Institutions.
- ↑ Edmund Burke, the great Irish statesman, is on record as characterizing any discussion of the abstract right of taxation in place of the actual facts of the situation, as belonging to the domain of political metaphysics, "a great Serbonian bog in which armies whole have sunk," and that it was by fighting for such "a phantom, a quiddity, a theory that wants not only a substance but even a name," that English statesmen threw away their American colonies.
