tience, and even of voluntary co-operation on the part of taxpayers, and which find favor among the former races, hardly exist among the latter. It is interesting also to note, in connection with this subject, that the restitution to the government of what is termed "conscience money," which is of constant occurrence in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, is said to be very inconsiderable or wholly lacking in the States of the Latin races.
The comparatively insignificant position which the subject of taxation holds in economic literature has already been pointed out. Its relation to general literature is similar, and perhaps even more remarkable. Since sin came into the world, there has probably been no one purely human agency more prolific of crime and human suffering and of temptation to do wrong than the multitude of arbitrary, impolitic, and absurd laws which have been enacted to unjustly exact from the people contributions of their labor and property under the name of taxation, and yet the utilization of these experiences by novelists and dramatic authors has been almost entirely restricted to the comparatively petty transactions of smugglers and the illicit producers of distilled spirits. Even the terrible tax incidents which preceded and in fact occasioned the great French Revolution, have not entered largely as an element into more than one or two works of fiction of acknowledged merit in the English language.[1] As a field of morals also, this subject has been almost entirely ignored, and rarely entered upon by theologians; and yet under the tax laws of the United States, to say nothing of other countries, the practice of perjury is encouraged and tolerated to a degree that is utterly inconsistent with the existence of any high standard of public morality, or any rational religious belief.[2] And so also in the department of history. How few of those who consider themselves well read and well informed, recognize that the terrible decadence
- ↑ The only work of fiction of this character known to the writer is Gabrielle André, by S. Baring-Gould (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1871), in which the conditions of taxation existing in France, prior to the Revolution of 1788-89 are instructively used as the basis of a historical story.
- ↑ On this topic a leading American clergyman writes as follows: "It is probably a good thing that clergymen have not preached numerous sermons on taxation, even on its moral and religious aspects. That they have hitherto been ignorant on the subject is not so much their fault as their misfortune, and being ignorant on the details of this matter they have not taken it as the theme of set discourses. But, judging by my own experience, they have preached on the application of moral principles to every department of life, and on the obligation of a man to be honest in his dealings with government no less than with individuals. That taxation has moral relations and qualities they have perceived and stated, and that probably was as far as their qualifications authorized them to proceed. Whether the present encyclopedic education will give us the more serviceable clergymen remains to be seen."
