to the frequent visits and the odious examination of the tax-gatherers it may expose them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression”: to which may be added that the restrictive regulations to which trades and manufactures are often subjected, to prevent evasion of a tax, are not only in themselves troublesome and expensive, but often oppose insuperable obstacles to making improvements in the processes.
§ 2. Grounds of the principle of Equality of Taxation.
The first of the four points, equality of taxation, requires to be more fully examined, being a thing often imperfectly understood, and on which many false notions have become to a certain degree accredited, through the absence of any definite principles of judgment in the popular mind.
For what reason ought equality to be the rule in matters of taxation? For the reason that it ought to be so in all affairs of government. A government ought to make no distinction of persons or classes in the strength of their claims on it. If any one bears less than his fair share of the burden, some other person must suffer more than his share. Equality of taxation, therefore, as a maxim of politics, means equality of sacrifice. It means apportioning the contribution of each person toward the expenses of government, so that he shall feel neither more nor less inconvenience from his share of the payment than every other person experiences from his. There are persons, however, who regard the taxes paid by each member of the community as an equivalent for value received, in the shape of service to himself; and they prefer to rest the justice of making each contribute in proportion to his means upon the ground that he who has [pg 540] twice as much property to be protected receives, on an accurate calculation, twice as much protection, and ought, on the principles of bargain and sale, to pay twice as much for it. Since, however, the assumption that government exists solely for the protection of