Year: 1869

The question of taxes at this time Is OF
very unusual interest to two classes-the
legislator and the payer of the tax. The
position of the legislator removes him from
the payer of tax while he does not himself
escape from the burden he may or may haze
TO impose on Others. Besides this it involves
to very serious extent his relation to his
constituency There are class or classes
of people who will tolerate almost anything
in their Representatives but that they aid
in the imposition of taxes on the sovereign
people, For ourselves we submit that this
course is an erroneous and unjust one. 1t is
an imperative duty resting on every honest
legislator to levy tax equal to meet the
liabilities of the State. Here is not where
the people who pay taxes should find fault
or make their inquisition, but go back of
this and learn how the liabilities of the State
were incurred Was there a judiciousness
in the appropriations made-was there econ
omy in the application of the money of the
people. There can be no objection that is
valid to its being demanded by the taxpayers
that the State shall be governed with econo
my-that care should be had as to the char
acter and purpose of all the appropriations
made for any purpose. There must be well
considered need-there must be a high pro-
liability of advantage to the State before one
dollar should be appropriated. When, how


IL, chn ho
plaint of taxes, or when it has not been done
still the debt must be paid, and that legisla-
toris not to blame for levying such tax as
will pay it. But should he have failed in
care in his votes to make needless extrava-
giant or corrupt appropriations there is the
matter to investigate and call to account for.
We hold, and have so stated before, that the
burden of taxes arises from causes that
should be removed-that pocerty and crime
most of which Ghe pauperism and crime)
grow out of drunkenness, are the fruitful
sources of taxation. Well directed legisla-
ton that strikes blow at this will deliver
the taxpayer from a greater burden and far
more unreasonable than the tax that is lev
led to pay the interest on bonds that are IS
sued to aid the improvement and develop
ment of the State.


We propose now TO call the attention of
our anxious and burdened taxpayers as well
as their servants, the legislators to an
other fruitful source of crime-crime that
must be punished and repressed, if it can be
repressed at the expense of the people who
do not commit crime-at the expense of the
honest and toiling citizens of the State. We.
now allude to ignorance as the mother and
fosterer of crime. There has been and is
still covert effort made by the antedeluvian
school of politicians in the State to direct
prejudice prejudice-against
our present Constitution and the Republican
party on the ground of its ample and gener
Gus provision for universal education for the
children of the State We have heard cross
road and whisky impregnated orators, as
they enumerated the items of expense and
extravagance that would swell the taxes of
the people, dwell with unction on the amount
required for educational purposes under the
rule of Republicans Done, too, by men
whose culture and position should have been
a guarantee that they would not be guilty
of such meanness We shall not be surprised
at observing inklings of this same meanness
in our General Assembly from men who are
the swiftest to disavow every intention to
oppose the friends of education in their bene-
flcent efforts to secure every child the means
OF intellectual training. That it is mis-
taken view to suppose that taxation for the
education OF our future citizens to be a bur-
den, no one that is conversant with the his
tory or statistics of crime will doubt We
might say that crime thrives best where
poverty, ignorance and drunkenness prevail
Taxation largely pre-supposes crime as Its
occason. Crime, to very great extent,
grows out of the soil whose elements are
drunkenness, poverty and ignorance. These
1orm fertile seed bed out of which spring
the rankest crimes that curse the world.


we must again venture on tie indulgence
OF our at least supposed readers while we
Gull for them few flowers of statistics. 1t
is our misfortune not to have in our posses
sion, If they exist anywhere, the statistics of