Civil Government in the United States | Page 9

ventures a word of inquiry as to the
cause of the town's revolt. "What, then, is your grievance, my good
friend?" Our hosier knight, though deft with needle and keen with lance,
has a stammering tongue. He answers: "Tuta--tuta--tuta--tuta--too much
taxes!"
[Sidenote: "Too much taxes."] "Too much taxes:" those three little
words furnish us with a clue wherewith to understand and explain a
great deal of history. A great many sieges of towns, so horrid to have
endured though so picturesque to read about, hundreds of weary
marches and deadly battles, thousands of romantic plots that have led
their inventors to the scaffold, have owed their origin to questions of
taxation. The issue between the ducal commander and the warlike
tradesman has been tried over and over again in every country and in
every age, and not always has the oppressor been so speedily thwarted
and got rid of. The questions as to how much the taxes shall be, and
who is to decide how much they shall be, are always and in every stage
of society questions of most fundamental importance. And ever since
men began to make history, a very large part of what they have done, in
the way of making history, has been the attempt to settle these
questions, whether by discussion or by blows, whether in council
chambers or on the battlefield. The French Revolution of 1789, the
most terrible political convulsion of modern times, was caused chiefly
by "too much taxes," and by the fact that the people who paid the taxes

were not the people who decided what the taxes were to be. Our own
Revolution, which made the United States a nation independent of
Great Britain, was brought on by the disputed question as to who was
to decide what taxes American citizens must pay.
[Sidenote: What is taxation?] What, then, are taxes? The question is
one which is apt to come up, sooner or later, to puzzle children. They
find no difficulty in understanding the butcher's bill for so many
pounds of meat, or the tailor's bill for so many suits of clothes, where
the value received is something that can be seen and handled. But the
tax bill, though it comes as inevitably as the autumnal frosts, bears no
such obvious relation to the incidents of domestic life; it is not quite so
clear what the money goes for; and hence it is apt to be paid by the
head of the household with more or less grumbling, while for the
younger members of the family it requires some explanation.
It only needs to be pointed out, however, that in every town some
things are done for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, things
which concern one person just as much as another. Thus roads are
made and kept in repair, school-houses are built and salaries paid to
school-teachers, there are constables who take criminals to jail, there
are engines for putting out fires, there are public libraries, town
cemeteries, and poor-houses. Money raised for these purposes, which
are supposed to concern all the inhabitants, is supposed to be paid by
all the inhabitants, each one furnishing his share; and the share which
each one pays is his town tax.
[Sidenote: Taxation and eminent domain.] From this illustration it
would appear that taxes are private property taken for public purposes;
and in making this statement we come very near the truth. Taxes are
portions of private property which a government takes for its public
purposes. Before going farther, let us pause to observe that there is one
other way, besides taxation, in which government sometimes takes
private property for public purposes. Roads and streets are of great
importance to the general public; and the government of the town or
city in which you live may see fit, in opening a new street, to run it
across your garden, or to make you move your house or shop out of the

way for it. In so doing, the government either takes away or damages
some of your property. It exercises rights over your property without
asking your permission. This power of government over private
property is called "the right of eminent domain." It means that a man's
private interests must not be allowed to obstruct the interests of the
whole community in which he lives. But in two ways the exercise of
eminent domain is unlike taxation. In the first place, it is only
occasional, and affects only certain persons here or there, whereas
taxation goes on perpetually and affects all persons who own property.
In the second place, when the government takes away a piece of your
land to make a road, it pays you money in return for it; perhaps not
quite so much as you believe the