it may obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so. Questions on the foregoing Readings 1. How do you account for the increasing discontent with our taxation system? 2. What is meant by the “breakdown of the general property tax "? 3. To what extent is local assessment inadequate? 4. How may taxes unduly interfere with business? 5. Name the foremost defects of American taxation. 6. Give two reasons for the failure of the general property tax. 7. Why is it impracticable to enforce the general property tax? 8. Why is strict enforcement of the general property tax unjust? Summarize the case against the general property tax. 9. 10. Why are corporations inadequately taxed in this country? II. What is the true test of tax-paying ability? 12. What is the relation of corporate development to intangible property? 13. How should we deal with the problem of taxing corporations? 14. What is the significance of income and inheritance taxes? 15. What was President Roosevelt's judgment as to the status of income and inheritance taxes? 16. Which did he consider more important, the income or the inheritance tax? 17. Name some European countries in which the inheritance tax is used. 18. What is the social significance of heavy taxes on large fortunes? 19. How has the taxation problem been attacked in many states? 20. Why are the results unsatisfactory? 21. What is the necessity of a thorough survey of the tax problem? 22. Name some groups or classes which ought to be represented in this survey. 23. What should be done with the results of such an investigation or survey? 24. What is the importance of a firm grasp of the principles of taxation? 25. What four maxims or principles of taxation are mentioned by Adam Smith? times the suffrage was narrowly restricted. suffrage: A striking fact in the history of suffrage in the United States In colonial is the rapid extension of the vote since colonial days. Data are incomplete, but there is no doubt but that a relatively small proportion of adults exercised the vote previous to the American Revolution. In the earlier part of our colonial history, suffrage qualifications were vague and indefinite. Gradually, by means of legislative action, additional and more specific qualifications were imposed. In the Colonial qualifications following extracts, Dr. Cortlandt F. Bishop discusses the suffrage for the in colonial times: I. Ethnic. Race qualifications were not prescribed by statute, (1) ethnic, except in the southern colonies. I know of no law that would prevent an Indian or a Negro, if otherwise qualified, from voting in the northern colonies. [At a late date, however, Negroes and even Indians were barred from the suffrage in some of the southern states.] 2. Political.· Qualifications of this sort were rarely prescribed (2) political, by statute. In Pennsylvania, voters were required to be natural born subjects of England; in Delaware, of Great Britain. . . . Massachusetts after 1664 required freemen to be Englishmen, while in North Carolina there was the peculiar provision that "no person inhabitant of this province, born out of the allegiance of his majesty and not made free," could vote. . . ... 3. Moral. Moral qualifications were insisted on only in New (3) moral, England, though Virginia denied the franchise to any "convict or person convicted in Great Britain or Ireland during the term for which he is transported. In the New England colonies moral delinquencies had a double effect. Evidence of a positive character was 1 From Cortlandt F. Bishop, History of Elections in the American Colonies. New York, 1893; pp. 51-54, 56, 59-61, 64-66, 69-70. (4) religious, (5) age, (6) sexual, (7) residential, (8) and property. at one time necessary before a person could be admitted to the freedom of the colony, while the absence of correctness in moral behavior would, in certain cases, lead to the suspension of a freeman from his privileges or even to his total disfranchisement. [What constituted correct moral behavior was variously interpreted in the different colonies.] . . . 4. Religious. In Massachusetts and also in the New Haven colony freemen were required to be church members. [Rhode Island required a profession of Christianity, but barred Roman Catholics from the vote.] . . . In South Carolina a statute enacted in 1716 required voters to profess the Christian religion. [There were also religious qualifications of a negative sort.] For instance, Quakers were strictly debarred from becoming freemen in Massachusetts, and in Plymouth. . . . It seems to have been the rule in most of the A nerican colonies that Roman Catholics could not vote. [In New York and in South Carolina there is] evidence tending to prove that Jews could not legally vote. 5. Age. - It may be stated as a general proposition that electors were required to be twenty-one years of age. . . ... 6. Sexual. There see ns to have been no women's rights party in the colonies; it was thus not found necessary to debar expressly women from the privilege of voting, except in Virginia. 7. Residential. In the early history of each colony there was, as has already been explained, very little definiteness in regard to the qualification of voters. [Still there is evidence to show] that residence within the govern 1ent, province or territory, was generally required. . . . 8. Property. The property qualification in the American colonies is a subject of great importance. The qualifications mentioned in the preceding sections were for the most part confined to particular portions of the continent. . . . [On the other hand.] in every province, whether royal or proprietary, there was introduced, beginning in the latter part of the seventeenth century, some sort of property qualification, and the tendency during the middle of the eighteenth century was toward a certain amount of uniformity in this respect throughout the colonies. . . . [The amount of property required, however, varied widely among the different colonies.] . . . 194. The demand for universal suffrage1 of the doctrine of to the question of the suffrage. Colonial standards of suffrage were largely carried over into our Application earlier national history, and in 1789 probably less than five per cent of the American people were permitted to vote. After the opening of natural rights the nineteenth century, however, there was a growing agitation for the extension of the suffrage. One of the important arguments advanced in favor of a wider suffrage was the doctrine of natural rights, according to which all men are born free and equal, and are entitled to certain fundamental rights of which they may not be deprived. How this doctrine was applied to the question of suffrage is illustrated in the following extract from an address before the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention of 1834, at a period when the restricted suffrage in that state was a source of ill-feeling and serious dissension: We contend then, That a participation in the choice of those who make and administer laws is a natural right, which cannot be abridged, nor suspended any farther than the greatest good of the greatest number imperatively requires. And this greatest good is not that of any portion of the people, however large, but of the whole population of a state. It may seem strange that a fundamental truth like this, which contains the very life-blood and vitality of a republican government, should be called in question at the present day, and in our own country. But it is nevertheless true that there are those, who, while they yield a formal and guarded deference to this great doctrine, yet in their reasoning and practice destroy all the force of their hollow and doubtful admission; and maintain doctrines, which, if followed out to their legitimate consequences, would justify almost any exercise of irresponsible and unjust power. Suffrage a natural right. This funda mental truth ignored. Government was first formed by the act, and with the consent of Government those who were to be governed, given either expressly, or by acquiescence. And what did government confer upon those who established it? Here lies the radical error of those who contend that all governed, 1 From an Address to the People of Rhode Island, assembled in Constitutional Convention in 1834. "Chiefly written by Thomas W. Dorr,' Providence, 1834; pp. 26, 28-29. rests upon the consent of the but previous political rights are the creatures of the political compact. Those to the estabreasoners will tell you about rights created by society. We wish lishment of government to ask previously what those rights were, which existed before political there existed society itself. Those rights were the rights to life, to liberty, to a natural property in general, to the pursuit of happiness. right to life, personal liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, and to de cide upon one's par Life was the gift of the common Maker of all; and could not be taken without committing the greatest act of injustice which one man can commit against another. Personal liberty too, the right to walk abroad upon the face of the earth, was another natural right. The bounties of nature were all at the beginning spread out before the human race for their sustenance and enjoyment; and he who should appropriate the fruits of the earth to his own use, - and more especially those with which he had mixed his own labor, by the cultivation of the soil, had a just right to repel the invasion of him who should seek to dispossess him of what he had acquired. This was the natural right to property. Each individual also had the right of pursuing his own happiness, in the way which he might prefer, provided he injured no man in the enjoyment of the same right. Another great personal right, already alluded to, has been reserved for the last: it is the right which every man, among the families by ticipation in which nations were composed, had, of giving or withholding his voice government. in every question relating to the union of those families in a form of government; and of removing from its jurisdiction if that union were formed against his consent. Suffrage The existence of such a natural right is too evident to be disputed. And so far was it from being surrendered when government was once formed, that its continuance was absolutely necessary to maintain the existence of that government, by the reëlection of new magistrates, when the terms of those first elected had expired. This right is the very right of suffrage which is the burden of our present inquiry; and which we call a natural right... |