the States, having, since 1858, by re-adjudication, or original decisions, been settled beyond the possibility of controversy. These in their proper order it is proposed to notice hereafter; but prior to doing so, it seems essential to a clear and full comprehension of the reforms already effected and of those which through all agencies are to be struggled for in the future, to go back and present a review of the whole subject as it were ab initio.

The general idea or principle which has thus far been made the basis of nearly all the law and administration pertaining to local taxation in the United States has been founded on a popular assumption, that in order to tax equitably it is necessary to assess everything; the term everything being at the same time used in a sense so indefinite as to embrace not merely things in the nature of physical actualities other than persons, but also persons, income, rights, representatives of property, titles, trusts, conclusions of law, debts, and in short any act of assessing capable of resulting in the obtaining of revenue. As a logical sequence of this idea, the exemption of anything from taxation is furthermore held to be not only impolitic but unjust, and if made necessary by circumstances, as something to be regretted.

Equally popular and plausible is the argument by which this assumption, and the administrative system based on it is upheld and defended. "Is not all property," it is asked, "either directly or through its owner protected by the State or Sovereignty?" "Do not all persons owe allegiance to the State?" And if so, "Why should not all persons and property contribute to the requirements of the State for revenue, in proportion to their ability?"

But popular and plausible as are the assumptions and arguments on which the existing system of local taxation has been built up, made operative over the persons, property, and business of more than forty millions of people, and fortified by a vast amount of adjudication, it will require but little investigation and analysis to satisfy any one who can divest himself from the influence of old prejudice, of the truth of the following propositions: First. That the assumption that it is necessary to assess everything in order to tax equitably involves an impossibility,

and therefore unavoidable inefficiency, injustice, and inequality in administration. Second. That as popularly used in respect to matters pertaining to taxation, the term property is made to apply equally to entities and to symbols, or non-entities, which in itself is an absurdity; and, finally, that the outcome of all this is a system which powerfully contributes to arrest and hinder natural development, to corrupt society, and is without a parallel in any country claiming to be civilized. And as further illustration of this latter point it may be added that notwithstanding the recent discussions, the whole subject is yet so unfamiliar to the people of the United States that probably nine out of ten of our best informed readers, and even of the members of the bar, take it for granted that the method of assessing and collecting taxes for local and municipal purposes is substantially the same all the world over, and would be greatly surprised to find on investigation that the American system is one of the things exclusively American and so little esteemed by the people of other countries as to be for this reason strictly "non-exportable."

These assertions may appear unwarrantable to some men, and as testifying of conceit rather than of knowledge; but whether this be so or not, a consideration of the following facts will help to determine.

In the incipient stages of society, where property consists almost or quite exclusively of things tangible and visible, lands, buildings, slaves, cattle, ships, household effects and implements, the theory that equality of taxation requires the assessment of everything was not impracticable in application, and under most circumstances afforded but little opportunity for the working of injustice in respect to arbitrary discriminations in assessing. But its full execution must, nevertheless, even in the most simple condition of society, have been always attended with great difficulties. There is nothing which men more abhor in government than personal inquisitions, and in the language of a committee of the French National Assembly of 1789 (of which Talleyrand and Larochefoucauld were members), the recognition and practice of such inquisitions by any government is something inconsistent with and antagonistic to the maintenance of a free people. Again, had nothing

come down to us in English history from the time of Edward III. other than one of the assessment rolls of the period (when there was little or no property capable of taxation but what was visible and tangible), the evidence would be complete that the mass of the English people were but little better than slaves, for the mere inspection of such rolls shows that their preparation involved such an inquisitorial scrutiny into domestic life, such a seeing, handling, and valuation of everything in the household, from the utensils of the kitchen to the furniture of the bedchamber, as to make personal freedom or a sense of personal self-respect on the part of the tax-payer who submitted to such a scrutiny, almost an impossibility.* And in this connection it is also pertinent to call attention to the circumstance that the famous insurrection of English yeomen and peasants under Wat Tyler in the reign of Richard II. (the successor of Edward III.), originated directly in the attempt of a tax-gatherer or assessor to ascertain by brutal personal examination whether a daughter of Wat Tyler had attained the age of puberty, and in consequence had so become liable to enrolment for capitation assessment.

But to whatever extent simplicity in the elements of property simplified the original methods and ideas in respect to local taxation, the problem involved rapidly changed, and became more and more intricate as increasing population and increasing commerce and intercommunication between States and communities required that property should to a great extent be put into a condition to admit of being readily mobilized, in order to allow of its most profitable use and application. Thus a large proportion of what is to-day popularly termed "personal property" in every highly civilized State is of the most intangible character, and in great part invisible and incorporeal; such, for example, as negotiable instruments in the form of bills of exchange, State, municipal, and corporate bonds, and the multiplied forms of evidence of indebtedness

*A copy of an assessment roll of the time of Edward III. 1329–1376, given by Lingard in his History of England, contains a list of articles down to a towel and a bench; and the historian notes that in the returns are carefully mentioned the very rooms in which the articles were found, and that there were no exemptions except one suit of clothes for each person, which were supposed to be included in the tax levied on the polls, or the person.

all of which, if entitled to the name of property, is through a great variety of circumstances, constantly fluctuating in value; is offset by other indebtedness, which may not be the same one hour with another; is easy of transfer, and by simple delivery is, in fact, transferred continually from one locality to another, and from the protection and laws of one State to the sovereignty and jurisdiction of some other. In the absence of the power of clairvoyance, therefore, any attempt on the part of an assessor to obtain independent cognizance of such commercial and financial instrumentalities for the purpose of valuation and assessment is, on its face, an impossibility; and if the co-operation of the person to be assessed is to be invited or relied on, two of the most powerful influences that can control human action, love of gain or the unwillingness to part with property, and the desire to avoid publicity in respect to one's private affairs, immediately unite to oppose and prevent such co-operation.

A resort to personal inquisition, with an accompanying machinery of oaths, " dooming," and penalties is next in order; under which the State, ignoring all rules enacted for the protection of debtors in the ordinary collection of debts, pursues the citizen for the collection of what it claims to be a debt, with no better result in nine cases out of ten than the impairment of the public sense of both justice and morality.*

But this statement very far from embraces all the difficulties inherent to this popular theory of the necessity of taxing everything in order to insure justice and equality. A further very large proportion of the so-called personal property of the country, which is not invisible or intangible, and which requires

*"It is claimed that each individual owes the State annually a certain sum of money in the way of taxes proportioned to his entire property. If he voluntarily pays, he escapes arbitrary measures. If he declines to pay or tries to avoid payment, he has no just cause to complain if he is regarded in the light of a criminal, or if the same arbitrary measures are used to collect his tax as if it were a debt owing by one citizen to another.

"But let us examine this averment. If the defaulting tax-payer is to be regarded as a criminal, and as such placed in the worst possible light, he certainly ought not to be deprived of the privileges of a criminal; which are a right to a public investigation according to the rules of evidence adopted by free and enlightened communities; a right to be heard before condemnation; and the right to be presumed innocent of having property subject to taxation until the fact is ascertained otherwise by legal proof. But under the existing tax laws, we do not accord to the tax-payer

only ordinary perception for recognition, is in the nature of instruments or subjects of commerce between States and nations; such as railroad cars, ships, steamboats, immense stocks of raw or manufactured products accumulated in store for the sole purpose of movement. What shall be the situs of all these things for assessment? If actual location is to be determinative, then a product of grain or merchandise, which, in movement for a market or conversion into other forms, may happen to be in Illinois in April, in Ohio or Massachusetts in May, in New York in July, in New Jersey in August, and in Connecticut in October, will be liable to five separate taxes in one and the same year; for the laws of each of these States

the privileges of a criminal; for no tax can be assessed on a large proportion of the personal property of the State, according to any rules of legal evidence that any common law court would adopt. No assessor, under the laws of New York, in assessing personal property can act judicially. The law gives him no power to obtain legal testimony of a character that is admissible in a court; he must act the part of an arbitrary despot against an inculpated tax-payer, or not act at all, and his conclusions for acting must be reached at best by the testimony of those who have no means of knowing anything, in a legal sense, about the subject-matter under investigation. It seems clear, therefore, that any attempt to tax without legal evidence, is an act of usurpation or despotism, wholly antagonistic to the principles of a free government, and that it is a mockery to characterize such acts as, in any sense, judicial proceedings.

"Nor does the right to reduce or regulate the assessment by the oath of the taxpayer relieve the law in any degree of its unequal and despotic character; for every individual holding public office in the United States knows that oaths as a guarantee of truth in respect to official statements have ceased to be of any value. The assessments made according to the oaths of parties, furthermore, are not made according to legal evidence, upon examination and proofs; but according to the will and secret caprice of each tax-payer, instigated by his selfishness, and the natural depravity of human nature. Each tax-payer, under the present rule, becomes therefore the interpreter, not only of the law, but of the fact, and makes a secret interpretation of both, and we have as many interpreters of the law as there are numbers of tax-payers; and also an indefinite multiplicity of assessors; for each person who unfairly reduces his own assessment arbitrarily assesses thereby some other of the community for the difference.

"Could or would any people apply the same rules for the collection of debts? Is there any one who has so much confidence in human nature that he will propose a law, that a person who is sued shall be discharged from all claims of indebtedness if he will make oath, interpreting both the law and the fact himself, that he owes the claimant nothing? Is it believed, that under tariff laws, the government could get sufficient revenue to pay for its collections, if the importer was permitted to offset debts against the value of his goods; or if the law was peremptory that his oath alone should be given, and that there should be no legal examination, inspection or proof of the value or character of the importations?"— Second Report Commissioners of New York, 1873.