The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-04-02

Say what people will the question of
taxation is really of very great impor-
tance. 1t will never down, and it
is as Unsuitable as the daughters of
the horse Ieech." 1t comes and stays
with the years, and is forever sucking
the very life-blood of the people. The
cry is from the demagogues, the trusts,
the remOrseless m~UnOpolies more taxes
for the people and more profits for us.
The Mckinley gang in the house
have not q word for lower taxes, but
their one thought is to rob and outrage
burden bearers of our country. They
seek to raid the pockets of the people.
he McKinley-Dingley devil-trap is
set for the tOilers and already Overbur-
dened. The new meaSure is very de-
~fective, very absurd, very i%ndefensi-
BILE. 1t breeds trusts, it shields wrong,
it plumbers the people. The minority
report showed up some of its excuses
and inequalities and differences. The
contention of the report was mat IL
was a scheme to protect manufacture
ers. and that it was in it's details as
DAD as Il DOuIlly - IL D
I'VE rest our opposition upon the
broad principle that congress was IN
vested with the power OF taxation dS
a. means of collecting from each CIT
izen his fair proportion toward the sup
port Of the government, and that IL IS
a gross perversion of that sovereign
power to employ it as a means OF en-
aiding favored classes to levy UNJUST
charges upon the great body OF the
people. i y No man, however blind
he may be, would defend a system OF
taxation under which the government
first collected the money and atterWard
distributed it among its favorlteS.'
This complaint is we'll sustained. 1t
In a true bill against the robber drag
net. The Observation-Disclosures monster is
drawn upon a scheme based upon the
insistence hat taxation is indeed a
blessing, and happy and prosperous are
any people who stagger under a daily
load of high taxation. If the true road
to prosperity is high taxes then what
q huge mistake have the fathers made,
and what a miserable sham n ao-
surdity was the opposition to England
of the American people in the last GEN.
fury. Says the report:
eff this opinion is we'll founded, then
all the struggles for freedom winch
have revolved around the question Oh
taxation have proceeded upon d lalse
theory, and the American coionlSts,
when they determined that they would
not submit to taxation without repre-
sentation, INDUCED in a mistaken zeal
for liberty. The patriotic resolve or
our forefathers not to use goods upon
which Great Britain had laid an I'M
port duty was wrong if the argument
for protection is right, because accord
ing to thai argument, the British I'M
porters were really paying the tax over
which the American colonlstS went to
war
Some years ago a political economist,
whose work we read twenty years ago,
that there were eighty works on
political economy then in the British
library, the Museum" n that all
were against protection but two. The
men who best understood the principles
involved were nearly an unit in oppo-
sition to national prosperity by grind
ing taxation. The objection is we'll sus-
tanned that a robber tariff fosters
trusts and combines. The experiences
of this country. so unfortunate and
affective, all go to show that this con-
fention is just and is true. The report
says:
I'VE believe in the principles of COM
petition, and we believe that the people
Of the United States can successfully
sompete against all other people of The
world, and we denounce as a crime
against the best interests of our people
any law which leaves the consumer of
xhis land subject to the exactiOns of