of the local errors seen in the works of many masters, old and modern, may be attributed.
If the free-hand drawings were set aside or destroyed as soon as made, it would remove the temptation that now exists to waste time in technical finish that might to the pupil's lasting benefit be spent in new effort at discovery, discriminating differences in various inclosed areas, values, or colors.
We might then come to be able to see the beautiful in Nature spread at our feet, and in common things at our very door, and not as now, under the name of art, hew down the mind of the rising generation to the narrow notion that the beautiful must be sought only on the canvases and in the conventionalities of the past or present age of interpreters, however exquisite or grand their works may be.
| PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. |
By DAVID A. WELLS, LL. D., D. C. L.,
CORRESPONDANT DE L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC.
XI.—THE EXISTING METHODS OF TAXATION.
SUBJECTS OF TAXATION.—The subjects of taxation, to use a happy generalization of Justice Field of the United States Supreme Court (Foreign-held Bond Case, 15 Wallace), "are persons, property, and business. Whatever form taxation may assume, whether as duties, imposts, excises, licenses, or direct, it must relate to one of these subjects. It is not possible to conceive of any other, though as applied to them taxation may be exercised in a great variety of ways."
With this postulate we are legitimately led up to the consideration of the ways or methods by which the State or Government, in virtue of its sovereignty, and on the ground of necessity, and solely for its support, taxes or compels contributions from the three above-enumerated subjects, for the purpose of defraying its expenditures.
Apportionment of Taxation.—This department of the subject of taxation, while the most practical and therefore the most interesting, is at the same time the one most obscure, and the one about which there is the most striking difference of opinion among writers on economic and fiscal subjects. The four maxims or canons laid down by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, by
right eye, which was chiefly used, that when looking at a pinhole ten inches off he saw two, about one tenth of an inch apart, and between these several more, yet the accuracy obtained was the highest ever recorded—98·34 per cent.
