Politics. OUGHT TAXATION TO PRESS EQUALLY UPON NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-I. "Taxes ought to have no other end than the production of revenue, with as light a burden as possible.—Bentham. Ir is customary for political economists to define capital as the sum total of the wealth of the community capable of gaining profits the improvable property of the nation; and labour, as any active effort by which that property is made subservient to the necessities, comforts, or luxuries of the people. It is with capital and labour in this general comprehensive sense that we have to do on the present occasion, and our question is, Which ought to bear the greatest share of the expenses of Government, i. e., taxation? We think a limited space will suffice to make it apparent that capital should be the most heavily taxed. This simplest truth of political science will be readily admitted, viz., that in return for the care employed in the protection, conservation, and improvement of life and property-in the government and defence of the commonwealth-in the carrying out of works beneficial in their results to the great mass of the people-in guarding the interests and in promoting the glory of the nation, each individual should contribute, according to his ability, a just share of the expenses to which the execution of these things leads, provided always that the modes in which these things are accomplished are in harmony with the views of the nation, as expressed by the votes of its representatives. Capital being, as it is commonly defined, wealth already accumulated, is permanent in its own proper nature, and improvable, or capable of being rendered reproductive, by labour or the operation of nature's laws, and receives but a temporary diminution of its latent power of reproduction, by a withdrawal of some portion of it in payment of taxes, i. e., the price paid for the prevention of evil and the increase of security. In consequence of the elasticity of its reproductive energy, it quickly re-acquires and assumes its dimensions previous to the withdrawal for governmental purposes. On the contrary, labour cannot, under any circumstances, become accumulated wealth. It is, by its very nature, and in its every operation, self-exhaustive. Labour expended is incapable of increase or reproduction. Hence, any portion of labour withdrawn for the expenses of Government it is impossible to reproduce; it is lost to the community, and as such, is a national loss, incapable of replacement; therefore labour ought to be more lightly taxed than capital in a just and equitable arrangement of national burdens. Capital, we have observed, is wealth accumulated, according to the laws of our own country, which, in the present case, we must adopt as the practical standard of the principle of taxation. Capital, property, or accumulated wealth, is taxed by what it is worth; that is, by its marketable value, or what it is capable of producing or becoming in a given time; but labour is taxed by its whole value in that same given time, not by what the value of a given amount of labour will produce in that time. In this we have an extreme instance of the flagrant injustice resulting from mistaken notions regarding the relative powers of capital and labour to bear taxation. Great care is necessary in the present debate to avoid a confusion of those ideas which are popularly represented by the terms capital, profit, and income, with the terms capital and labour, in the terms of our question; as in the latter case they are used in a general sense, and in the former they have a particular significance the one applicable to the routine of commerce, the other subservient to the development of political science. Taxes operate upon wealth or capital, and labour, in various ways. We will examine these operations in their relation to the point at issue. Taxes imposed on wealth take so much of what it is capable of producing in a given time without labour; that is, of its necessary productiveness: its real, actual value remains intact, exactly as before the imposition of the tax; its produce is lessened, but, as capital, it is still the same, and its powers of future productiveness unimpared. On the contrary, labour by necessity suffers a diminution of its own proper value or bulk, by so much as may be withdrawn by the tax. Thus capital, by a tax of 1 per cent., is not reduced to a value of 99 per cent.; but supposing the tax to be annual, the interest of the capital only for the year is reduced to the extent of this 1 per cent., the capital remaining still 100. But such a tax of 1 per cent. on labour reduces the value of it to the labourer to 99 per cent., which shows that labour is incapable of receiving an equal burden of taxation, without suffering a progressive diminution, which constantly converges to complete exhaustion. A tax imposed on capital, while withdrawing from its interest or its productiveness, unassociated with labour, cannot become an element in the cost of supplying those wants necessitated by man living in civilized society, because the interest only of the capital suffers diminution, and this diminution cannot become an addition to the consumer, because the consumer is not the owner of the capital, but a purchaser of the surplus productiveness of that capital; and as the number of consumers or pur chasers of that surplus productiveness is necessarily the same before and after the imposition of the tax, the value of such surplus maintains an equilibrium in its value to the owner of the capital and to the consumer, in accordance with that axiom of political science,-Supply and demand continuing equal, the value also continues equal, or the same. Not so with labour, as, from its very nature, it must of necessity become a chief element in the cost of all productions, if not the chief cost; hence a tax imposed on labour must be borne by the consumer, through an increase in the cost of production; then, if the cost of production be increased by a tax on labour, two things must of necessity result, a diminution in the quantity consumed by the inability of consumers to purchase, and the injurious competition of foreigners not subject to the tax, who would be able, by their freedom from the tax, to supply consumers at a lower cost than the tax-paying producers or labourers. Hence the national prosperity would be proportionately and injuriously affected by an equal tax on capital and labour, because the demand for labour decreases with the consumption, a surplus of labourers is thrown upon the community, pauperization increases in proportion to the destitution and suffering of the surplus labourers,―all of which points are of paramount importance to the national prosperity in the estimation of all sound political economists, whose constant aim is to avoid such a catastrophe by apportioning a lighter tax to labour than to capital. This feature in the effect of taxes on labour cannot be too. carefully considered nor too forcibly expressed, as the keen competition of foreign producers, more lightly taxed than our home producers, has already displaced many branches of manufacture, both in foreign markets and at home-those who formerly were consumers of our surplus productiveness having now become producers; and we have assumed their position, and are consumers of their surplus productiveness, from the very fact that their labour has not the same amount of taxation to bear as ours, and, consequently, their surplus production has not the factitious addition of excessive taxation. Instances of this nature are "familiar as household words to all that are practically conversant with manufactures and commerce; and the technical phrase is ever on their lips, "We are cut out of the market by foreigners." Taxation of capital being free from this objectionbeing under no circumstances an element in the cost of production-is, therefore, more justly to be chosen, as able to bear the greater burden of taxation. We have seen that taxation on labour is an element in the cost of production; it consequently increases the cost of the productions of labour to the consumer. Whatever increases the cost of the necessaries and comforts of life to the community, is found to increase misery, destitution, sickness, and mortality. These circumstances of the social state, of necessity, withdraw from the quantity of labour possessed by the nation, according to the extent in which these evils prevail or are produced by the burden of taxation; therefore, in exact proportion to the amount of taxation on labour, so is the national poverty increased, its prosperity destroyed, and its ruin hastened. We briefly recapitulate. Capital being accumulated wealth, it possesses a necessary productiveness, upon which alone taxation can be made to press safely. This self-productive power of capital, never becoming an element in the cost of production, cannot increase the price of any surplus product to the buyer or consumer, and, therefore, never diminishes the power of future productiveness; hence the national prosperity is sustained and increased. But labour being self-exhaustive, and any tax imposed upon it diminishing its primary bulk, causes a progressive diminution of its powers of production-also, by its nature, a necessary element in the cost of production-consumption is diminished, competition is invited, labour is cheapened, destitution ensues, misery, sickness, and mortality increase, and the national prosperity is injured. From these reasons, therefore, we conclude that taxation ought not to press equally on capital and labour, but that the greater burden of taxation ought in justice to be imposed on capital. Birmingham. NIGHT. L'OUVRIER. She brings as many thoughts as she wears stars.-N. Field. SUNRISE. I see the sun, Eternal painter, now begin to rise, And limn the heavens in vermillion dyes; With various temper he doth mix in one FLATTERY OF THE WORLD. Oh, thou world! great nurse of flattery, Why dost thou tip men's tongues with golden words, That fair performance cannot follow promise? HISTORY. Old Play, 1597. Time's witness, herald of antiquity, Ben Jonson. FRIENDSHIP.True friends like to do courtesies, not to hear them. "A Very Woman." Philosophy. IS CRIME INSANITY? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I. ALTHOUGH the historian, Livy, has laid down the maxim, "Mens peccat, non corpus; et unde consilium abfuit culpa est,"* it would be far from judicious in us, in the early stages of argumentation, at least, to embarrass this discussion by any reference to its ultimate issue in practice and legislation. The question should be entertained and debated as a purely philosophical one, and be kept free from the entangling mazes into which it may be drawn by widening the field indefinitely. Admitting that it has most important reference to the interests of society, we shall not, in the present paper, attempt to discuss these relations, but shall endeavour to find a true and just answer to the question as one of high philosophical importance, apart from and independent of its bearing on criminal legislation. There are only two words in the statement of the question of which definition is required; and these we shall endeavour so to explain as to make the topic comprehensible to any thinking person to which class the majority of your readers belong. Crime, in its widest possible sense, is a violation of law. Law is the restraint which society imposes upon its individual mernbers, that the safety of all may be, as far as possible, cared for and secured. Punishment is the means taken to prevent the individual members of society from violating these restraints. Punishment is, therefore, essentially a system of motives regularly agreed upon and decreed by law as the counteractives to those motives which lead to the commission of crime. The standard of crime is the injury it does to society; and the necessity for the protection of society is the foundation of the right to punish; and the amount of the punishment should be regulated by the injury, immediate and prospective, which society suffers, or is likely to suffer, from the commission of the crime. Crime, therefore, is, in reality, any kind of act which is not sanctioned by, approved of, and acted upon by the other members of society. Insanity is unsoundness of mind-disorderedness of intellect. It ranges, in signification, from the manifestation of slight eccentricities, to the commission of those acts which make men dangerous to themselves or others. It may be regarded as of three * "Mind sins, not body; and where reason is deficient, culpability is not." |