INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES 173 INTERNAL REVENUE placing at their disposal its valuable library. INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES, languages artificially formed in order to do away with the difficulties of com- munication between people whose nat- ural languages are different. Most of the schemes proposed intend merely to help business men and travelers, there is no aim to produce a literature in a language artificially formed. Early at- tempts to make an international lan- guage date back to Diderot and the French Revolution, but perhaps the most famous of them are Volapiik, Bolak or thvi Blue Language and Esperanto. The first, Volapiik, was invented by Schleyer in 1879 and attained considerable popu- larity, but the fact that it copied Eng- lish too closely aroused the opposition of the Continent. The second, Bolak, was formed by M. Bollack, a merchant of Paris who devoted a lifetime to the task and produced nine ponderous volumes on the subject. The difficulty with the Blue Language as it is called is that it is almost if not quite as difficult to learn as a foreign language and consequently has proved of little practical value. Esper- anto is the international language most in vogue at the present time, its great advantage being that it makes consider- able use of living languages. It elimin- ates what is special and irregular in the various languages, and retains that which is regular. Thus Esperanto is the easiest to acquire of any of these arti- ficially formed languages. Americans have since proposed two other interna- tional languages, Ro by Foster (1910), and Pangerman by Molee (1911). INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. From the beginning of the United States Government till 1860, the question of a system of internal improvements carried on by the general Government was a party question. The Republican (Demo- cratic-Republican), and after it the Democratic party as the party of strict construction, opposed such a system. Improvements, the property in which re- mains in the general government, as lighthouses, etc., were not opposed, but improvements on rivers and roads, the benefit of which passes to the States, were the objects of attack. Most of the earlier States were on the sea-coast, and the improvement of their harbors was at first carried on by means of ton- nage taxes on the commerce of the port, levied with the consent of Congress (see Constitution, Article I, section 10, clause 3). This practice was, in isolated cases, continued till the middle of the 19th cen- tury ; it was generally discontinued much earlier. As early as 1806 the improve- ment of roads by the National Govern- ment was conceived in order to indem- nify the interior States, and in 1823, the improvement by the National Govern- ment directly of rivers and harbors was begun. The Republican (Democratic- Republican) Presidents, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, opposed these im<. provements as unconstitutional, though toward the end of his term Monroe be- came more favorable to the system. John Quincy Adams was a warm advo- cate thereof and Jackson its stern op- ponent. Though the Democrats opposed any general system of improvements, they continued to apply funds to par- ticular purposes. The Whigs now adopted the system originated by the Democrat, Jackson, viz., the distribution of the surplus among the States. But once did the Whigs attempt to i)ut tiiis into execution, and then, in 1841, the veto of President Tyler, at odds with his pai'ty in Congress, put an end to that scheme, which has not since been revived. The introduction of railroads has partly done away with the question of improvements for roads, while a sys- tem of assistance to the railroads, by nieans of the grant of land along the line of their route, has sprung up. From this policy a revulsion has set in and the present tendency is to the re- covery of as much of the land so granted as has not been earned by a strict com- pliance with the terms of the grant. To this both of the great political parties stand committed. INTERNAL REVENUE, the moneys collected under the internal revenue bu- reau in the Treasury Department of the United States. The term includes most of the receipts from national taxes, ex- cept customs duties ; but as commonly re- stricted it does not embrace receipts from the sale of public lands, patent fees, pos- tal receipts, etc., which are really sources of internal i avenue. Taxes are appor- tioned among the States only in propor- tion to the population. The first in- ternal revenue tax was by act of March 3, 1791, which provided for a tax on distilled spirits of domestic manufacture discriminating in favor of those pro- duced from domestic materials, and against those produced from foreign ma- terials. The enforcement of this act led to the Whisky Insurrection in 1791. In '. 1794 taxes were levied on carriages, retail selling of wines and foreign dis- tilled liquors, on snuff, sugar and sales at auction. In 1797 taxes were laid on stamped vellum, parchment and paper. In 179S the first direct tax of its kind, Vol. V-— Cyc — L
