New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-02-21
4 TAXPAYER ON TAX-PlYING.

We submit that a gentleman who has paid
to the revenue authorities during the past ten
wears the neat little sum of Two Hundred and
Fifty Thousand Dollars and who, as we are
further informed, has done it without grum-
bling, has earned the right to lecture on The
Robbery of the People by their Rulers-and
"the Remedy Most exasperated tax-pay-
ers take it out in swearing at the Collector,
with an occasional fling at the Secretary of
the Treasury, mixed with denunciations of
their own dark destiny. Mr.. Walter b. Pierce
relieves himself i'll another way-he lectures
to his fellow Uticans. He repays himself the
$3.50 900 after that fashion, and we are glad of
it. We do not advise anybody to re-
fuse to pay taxes however oppressive,
when they are clearly legal but there is no
law against lecturing, and there is every rea-
son why the aggrievcd should lecture if they
can say timely and useful and sensible things.
Mr.. Pierce takes the ground that if the peO-
pies money is raised, only to be stolen the tax
payers have a right to grumble, and we agree
with him, that they would be more than galley
slaves if they did not pay under kind of moral
protest "The light and stealthy STEP he
saws, "of the thief, is nightly heard by forty
"milliOns of people. To the amazement of
"the world. the splendOrs of the stupendous
"robberies of the New-York City Ring pail be-
"fore the new-risen and more effulgent glo-
cries of the Credit Mobiler swindle"-which
may be mixed as a matter of metaphor, but is
certainly incOntrovertible as a matter of fact
Looking about him, and observing what a
quantity of men it takes to carry on the
Government, and how strict the Revenue Ser
vice is in making everybody pay up promptly
Mr.. Pierce hits upon the idea mot very
original perhaps, but still in the present dark
state of things, rather than else brilliant) of
guarding the expenditures of the revenues
"as strictly as we do the collections thereof"
The authorities do not show much tenderness
to the people. Taxpayers must give bonds
they must make inventories of what they
have to start with; they must enter daily in a
book their transactions; they must make
monthly returns; they must produce all their
books of account when called on; they must
render annual inventories; they must appear
before the Commissioner when complained of
by any citizen. The truth is that i'll all the
universe no creature can be found so
inflexible, so Rhadamanthine, so deaf TO
all appeals for pity, so mercilessly Me-
dean and perfectly Persian, as the official
gentleman who knocks at your gate, sustained
by an enormous battery of statutes, and pro-
ceeds to carry off your money. But truculent
as he is, he is still creature Of the law, and
if the goose is to be treated to this kind of
sauce, why not the gander2 Mr. Pierce's
physic is rather powerful, and some public
people might find it hard to take. He
wants all public officers to be obliged to give
to the public which is obliged to trust them,
information respecting the way in which they
have accumulated their private fortunes, and
this information should be given under oath.
He wants tax-disbursers to be required to
make similar disclosures. He recon-
mends that detectives shall be employed
to watch the rulers. In short he
is, we are obliged to say, for proceeding upon
the principle that public servants are all
rogues. This is dreadful. This has ten
dency 10 make US all misanthropic This will