to collect the revenue. A very general feeling, therefore, naturally prevails that it is a laudable thing to cheat or rather rob the Government whenever opportunity offers.[1]
Limitations in the Sphere of Taxation.—Attention is next asked to the fact that the foregoing propositions respecting the unlimited power of a state to compel contributions, or to tax, and which (as shown) have received the sanction of the highest judicial authorities, are predicated on the assumption of complete sovereignty on the part of the state. But in a truly free state such sovereignty does not exist, and the conditions which make it free necessarily preclude its existence. Thus in every such state the two great functions which constitute its sovereignty, namely, the right to interfere with the liberty of the citizen and with his property, have been called into existence and can be rightfully exercised for certain purposes only, which admit of precise definition. In such a state the fundamental and essential purpose of government is not to abridge the liberty of the individual citizen in respect to his person, or his possession and use of property, but to increase it; and this result (overlooked in a great degree by economists and legislators), as has already been pointed out, can only be attained by taking a part of the property of the citizen which the existence of the state has enabled him to acquire, for the purpose of maintaining instrumentalities for preventing any encroachment upon his rightful liberty and punishing those who attempt it. In fact, in every free state there are limitations on the exercise of the taxing power, growing out of the structure of
- ↑ It is enough to see how railways are built by the Government of Italy to form an idea of the openings afforded for rascality and fraud in their construction. "They are not built by contract, but on estimate. A building company estimates that a certain line will cost a certain sum and receives the job, which is always indeed a 'job.' The Government guarantees a certain income per kilometre, and the constructor makes the road as long as possible; but when the grant (which is made in bonds of the state) for the amount authorized is exhausted, the constructor coolly tells the ministry that the road must stop there unless the ministry makes another grant, which is of course done, and the invariable result is that the original estimate is nearly, or quite, or even more than doubled; with the consequence that none of the roads, as they are made, ever pay their expenses and interest on their cost of construction. More than that, they are so burdened with deadheads that it is estimated that only forty per cent of the passengers they carry pay full fare, the remaining sixty per cent paying from nothing up to seventy-five per cent of the fare. Deputies and senators travel free everywhere in the kingdom, but as the state pays a block sum for their privilege, it is not a dead loss, though, as every deputy who travels insists on having a whole compartment for himself, the road becomes anything but a profitable one. Every employee of the great systems of Italian railways has the right to make three journeys a year on each one, where he likes, and with his family, and the consequence is that some of them ruin themselves taking long railway journeys for which they have not the money to pay the expenses. And they are sixty thousand, with as many more pensioned off who have the same privilege; and, as all travelers know, the railway fare is the smallest part of the expense of a journey."—Correspondence New York Evening Post, June, 1896.
