the Government in proportion to his ability. For if, as almost all authorities are now agreed, taxes are the compensation which persons or property pay to the state for protection, then it of necessity follows that where there is no protection, ability is no just guide for assessment. "Where there is no protection," said Judge Story (in the case of United States vs. Rice, 4 Wheaton, 276), "there can be no claim to allegiance or obedience." And that Adam Smith did not intend to have his first proposition fully accepted would seem evident from the circumstance that he added to it, and qualified it with these other words, "that is, in proportion to the revenue which they [the citizens] respectively enjoy under the protection of the state." Montesquieu, who wrote at an earlier date, also enunciated even more clearly this commonsense and equitable principle, when he said (see Spirit of the Laws), that "the public revenues ought not to be measured by the people's abilities to give, but by what they ought to give." "And what they ought to give," as has been remarked by another writer, "can, of course, be only measured by the benefit they are to derive."
Discriminating Taxation.—The proposition that "the subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the Government in proportion to their respective abilities" embodies also, and inferentially favors the policy of discriminating taxation, and finds popular expression and justification in the assertion that the rich man needs more protection from the state than the poor man, has more interests to be guarded, and it is therefore right that he should pay more in proportion to his fortune. "It is just," says Sismondi, the Italian economist, "that all should support the Government in return for the protection it gives to their persons and properties, in proportion to the advantages society guarantees to them, and the expenses which it incurs on their account." But the question is pertinent, to whom or to what class of its members does society afford the most protection or render the most service? Is there any standard by which such proportionality can be even approximately determined? To these questions Mr. John Stuart Mill has made the following answer:
"It can not be admitted," he says, "that to be protected in the ownership of ten times as much property is to be ten times as much protected. Whether the labor and expense of the protection, or the feelings of the protected person, or any other definite thing be made the standard, there is no such proportion as the one supposed, nor any other definable proportion. If we wanted to estimate the degrees of benefit which different persons derive from the protection of Government, we should have to consider who would suffer most if that protection were withdrawn; to
