territorial uniformity of indirect taxation must imply and involve absolute uniformity and equality of these taxes on like values and quantities. But, under the operation of natural laws, larger quantities will be owned and produced by one person in one State than in another. Colorado and Texas have large herds of cattle; Illinois has large corn-fields and large distilleries; Louisiana large sugarplantations, and New England large factories, owned by single persons. Two States may, and in some instances do, have equal per capita wealth in the aggregate, but in the one the wealth may be made up of capital invested in numerous small industries adapted to its soil and climate; while in the other, owing to different natural conditions, there may be great concentrations of capital in a few hands and in a few industries. Thus, in the case of our late income-tax, seven States, in the year 1869-Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Californiapossessed forty per cent. of the assessed property of the United States, and had just about forty per cent. also of our population. But, at the same time, these same seven States paid full three fourths of the entire income-tax levied by the Federal Government upon the people of the whole country; or, to put it differently, the States which had sixty per cent. of the wealth and population of the country paid only about one fourth of the income-tax. A violation, therefore, of the rule of uniformity in taxes on incomes from the same class of property, in the hands of a single person, becomes a warfare on the natural resources and natural abilities of some States, and a warfare upon property beyond a certain amount in one man's hands. Thus, for example, two farms, wherever situated, owned by two persons and producing a profit of $2,000, will produce the same competition, in the sales of products, as one farm, owned by one man, producing $4,000 of profit. The profits of the two farms and two persons, under an exemption of $2,000, would, however, be free from all taxation; while the profit of the competing farm, producing the same income as the two other farms, would be subject to a burden on its income of two and a half per cent. if the farm happens to be in the hands of a single owner. The aggregate of the value of the property is the same in both cases; but the incidence of taxation is made dependent upon the circumstance of making the assessment upon two persons rather than one. This is not equality of burden on competing property, or on immediate competitors; but, as M. Thiers says, "it is robbery."

A GRADUATED INCOME-TAX, TO THE EXTENT OF ITS DISCRIMINATION, IS AN ACT OF CONFISCATION.

The Federal Constitution further provides that private property shall not be taken for public use except upon compensation. It is conceded that this is a limitation on the power of Congress. There must be a line between the taking of private property for public use and taxation; but how can that line be drawn except by the rule that taxation means uniformity of burden on competing avocations and competing property? A recent decision of the Supreme Court of New Jersey seems to be direct upon the unconstitutionality of discriminating burdens on the same class of persons or property. Thus the New Jersey Court said: "A tax upon the person or property of A, B, and C, individually, whether designated by name, or in any other way, which is in excess of an equal apportionment among the persons or property of the class of persons or kind of property subject to the taxation, is, to the extent of such excess, the taking of private property for a public use without compensation. The process is one of confiscation and not of taxation." ("Township Committee of Reading," 36 N. J., p. 66, 1872; see also "Cooley's Constitutional Limitations," §§ 490-515; "Durach's Appeals; 62 Pennsylvania State Reports.")

It only remains, to complete this argument, to consider what is meant by property of the same class. The answer to this is, obviously, property which immediately or directly competes in open market. The force of competition is not dependent upon the quantity owned or produced by few or many persons, but upon the aggregate quantity of similar property offered in market, whether produced or owned by few or many persons.

It may also be pertinent in conclusion to say that two thousand dollars is a larger exemption than has ever been allowed in any income-tax system in any country except the United States; where, owing to comparative equality of fortunes, the exemption, if any exemption is to be permitted, should be extremely low. Wherever the line of exemption may be drawn, an act of discrimination is instituted against all those who own property producing income in excess of the line of the exemption. In England, where business, to a greater extent than in any other country, is conducted by large capitalists, where the soil is owned by a comparatively few persons, and where the entire property of the nation is greatly concentrated, an exemption of seven hundred and fifty dollars, under the income

tax there allowed to each person, is of much less practical importance than a similar exemption would be in the United States, where it would remove a large portion of all incomes derived from property from the burden of the tax. In France, owing to the very great and minute subdivisions of the ownership of the soil, a small exemption would also take from the income list a large proportion of the owners of real estate in that country. Leroy Beaulieu, indeed, estimates that an exemption of twenty-five hundred francs (five hundred dollars) would exempt from three fourths to four fifths of the entire income of France; and accordingly, when in 1848 the enactment of an income-tax was debated in France, it was proposed to put the exemption as low as two hundred and fifty francs, or fifty dollars. Any judicious system of taxation in any country will have reference to its natural products; its extent of territory; its contiguity to competing nations; the density or sparseness of its population, the habits of the people, and the comparative equality of their fortunes. The United States can conveniently, economically, and uniformly collect its revenues from a few domestic articles, like whisky and tobacco, manufactured in large amounts at one place by one person or firm; and on imports, like sugars, tea, and coffee, introduced into the country, to a great extent, in large vessels and in large quantities at a few ports. With the limitation of our revenues to such few sources, economy of assessment and collection will be insured, unnecessary inquisition and loss of time-a form of unproductive taxation-will be avoided, and only a comparatively few persons will feel the direct hand of the tax-gatherer; while all will cheerfully pay taxes in regulated prices on their expense and consumption, where, by the operation of natural laws, all taxation must finally

rest.

But any attempt to collect an income-tax, which is equal and has none of the features of spoliation or confiscation, from our sparse population, extending from Florida to Alaska, is entirely unpractical; and, unless the rate is excessive, the taxes received would not pay the cost of assessment and collection, while, as before shown, the rights of property, the great republican principle of equality before the law, and constitutional law itself, will alike preclude any exemption of any income derived from like property. It is a vital and constitutional question, demanding absolute equality, that is here involved and at stake. Any exemption whatever, small or great, except to the absolutely indigent, is purely arbitrary; and the principle, once allowed, may obviously be car

ried to any extent. Any exemption of any portion of the same class of property or incomes is an act of charity which every American ought to reject upon principle and with scorn, except under circumstances of great want and destitution. Equality and manhood, therefore, demand and require uniformity of burden in whatever is the subject of taxation.

DAVID A. WELLS.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM.

Ir is difficult to account for the lull in the interest which civilservice reform had awakened during the last Presidential canvass, by the mere preoccupation of the country with financial and commercial questions. Nothing less than a tremendous drift in the wrong direction, a settled opinion of the masses that our institutions have a virtue that is independent of good government, and can bear and even profit by negligences and errors that are fatal to monarchies, can account for the indifference of the press, the supercilious contempt of our leading politicians of both parties, the silence and apathy of Congress, and the tentative and inconsistent course of the President and the Cabinet, in regard to civil-service reform, which four years ago was introduced as the chief plank in the platforms of both parties. Its best friends have seemingly thought it incompatible with present success in their general political aims and measures. The two great parties have quietly seen the promises made by the Administration either broken or forgotten, or, where carried out, carried out furtively and in an apologetic spirit. The press as a rule has ridiculed the whole subject as impracticable, visionary, and unsuited to American circumstances; and it may almost be said that the small class of men who undertook to champion the cause have lost heart, or even hope, of its present practicableness. Persuaded that it is the subject of all others that needs public consideration, and on the proper understanding of whose importance the welfare of our national life depends, we seize the occasion of the recent publication of Mr. D. B. Eaton's valuable and instructive work on "Civil Service in Great Britain," to draw attention to the new and strong light which the success of reform in the civil service of the mother-country throws upon the methods needing to be applied to the reformation of the disheartening errors and abuses that mark our American administration of government, owing to the mis