New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-07-01

more fundamental than the provision that
direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States
in the ratio Of their Federal population. In other
words, if this State has five millions of people, and
Arkansas half a million, the Constitution pre-
scribes that Arkansas shall pay into the Treas
ury, as the product of direct taxation, exactly
one dollar for every ten paid by New-York.
/ am quite aware that judicial coach and
four has been driven through this Constitu-
tional requirement, yet there it stands, never
theess, to condemn this and every kindred
tax as wholly unwarranted.
| know that there are some who think to
make this tax popular by insisting that only
the rich pay it, but nothing is more untrue
widow with six young children, whom she
must somehow support out of the interest on
five thousand dollars in railroad bonds, their
only property, must pay five per cent. OF her
pittance as Income Tax, while the owner OF
One Millions worth of City lots, or Western
lands, increasing in value at the rate OF 20 to
so per cent. per annum, pays nothing at all!
Such contrasts might be instanced by scores.
The owner of hotel or store, or of mort
gage thereon, which pays him 5000 per an
mum, may live comfortably in Vermont or
Michigan on third of his income, while the
overseer of a mandatory, the cashier of
bank, who has no property whatever, but earns
$4,000 per annum by his daily labor, and is
compelled to live in or near great city 10
earn it, must spend his entire income, yet not
live so well thereon, as the other does on
g., 200, while his income vanishes the moment
his work stops, and yet each of these is re-
quired to pay like sum as Income Tax.
In this City, three men, well advanced in
life, are popularity supposed to be richer than
any Others; one of these has his whole fortune
invested in houses, lots, and mortgages, OF
which the value and the income would remain
undiminished, though he were to die to-mor-
row; a second has his means invested in rail-
roads and railroad securities; the third derives
his income mainly from the sale OF dry goods.
If these two last were to die tomorrow, he
would be bold man who would give seventy
five per cent. for their property, of what 1t Is
worth in their hands; and yet these three are re-
CURED alike to pay five per cent. OF their annual
gains as Income Tax.
Whatever popularity this tax may retain
is based on the impression that 1t taxes
the rich and exempts the poor. L pre-
sumo a majority could be induced to vote
that the entire cost of Government should be
betrayed by those who are worth $4,000, or
over and yet the success of that proposition
would ruin the Republic, by divesting large
majority of its voters of all practical interest
in public economy. We experience the fatal
effect of this discrimination, in this most mis-
governed and fearfully plundered City,
of whose hundred and odd thousand
voters, less than fifth pay any
IL. Al -. A
majority of our voters, including all those who
vote from ten to twenty times each at the
same election, believe it their interest to have
our municipal administration cost twenty rather
than ten millions per annum, since the land
lords, the merchants, banks, insurance offices,
&C., pay nearly all the taxes, while if money
is freely scattered from the treasury, the
"bOysn have better chances of getting share
of it. Whenever majority of the voters of our
country shall be governed by similar notions the
Republic will be near its end. | am sadly
aware that we are blest with statesmen,
whose touchstone of the merits of public
measure is the advantage it gives to that
broad, generous unaspiring West of which
they are pillars and ornaments, and If
these statesmen, ascertaining from the returns
that the Income Tax ia mainly paid by the
States east of the Delaware, are disposed to
continue it on that account, / would gladly
believe that the Chairman of the Committee
of Ways and Means does not belong to their
school, and l heartily wish he would so act on
this question as to prove it.
do not deny the power of Congress to i'm
pose any tax not forbidden by the Constitution;
admit that one Congress cannot absolutely
bind its successors except as to the payment
of debt; and yet hold that since it was pos
itiyely stipulated in an act passed five years
ago that this tax should cease in or with the
year 1870, it is not right. in that year, to abol
ish OF reduce other taxes to twice the amount,
and at the same time reimpose this one. Re-
garding this tax as the unwisest, the most
pernicious, the least justifable, of all our pub
lie burdens, hold that it be not reimposed,
and / wish I were not an invalid, forbidden
to write, and barely suffered to dictate, that
might plead more effectively. Believing that
the decision of the Senate on this question
affirms the deliberate judgment of the Amer
lean people, respectfully commend it to your
consideration and favor. II. G.