The great object of a republican form of government is to arrive at that
condition wherein all the people constituting its citizens will stand
upon a perfect equality in all things, which can be effected by
government. A government cannot determine that each citizen shall have
equal capacity to apply and make use of the rights, privileges and
immunities which it guarantees to its people, but it can determine that
each citizen shall have an equality of right to these benefits, the
perfect attainment of which must rest with the citizen.
The question of Labor and Capital, as was said before, is included in
the greater and more important question of a Common Equality, or an
equality which is predicated upon the fact that all mankind are
brethren. A republican form of government should find its fountain in
this fact, and all its causes should be governed by its deductions. All
the means of providing for the administration of the government, for its
maintenance and for the correction of any existing abuses, should be
formulated with this one greatest of all human possibilities ever in
view. Thus formulated, its practices would ever tend to bring all the
people into a comprehension of it, which comprehension is now scarcely
existent except in meaningless words, which are dealt from pharisaical
pulpits. In our last number the practice of protection to favored
interests was considered, with reference to its general effect upon
other unfavored industries; the unequal working of the system of levying
duties does not stop with generalities; it extends and touches a still
more vital point, and one which the people are more sensitive upon than
almost any other. The laying of specific duties upon imported goods and
wares is an indirect way of _taxing_ that portion of the people who
consume such imported goods and wares. It not only makes it possible for
the protected interest to exist at the expense of other interests which
consume, but by this operation the government obtains revenue which is
an indirect tax gathered from those who are compelled to pay the
advanced prices which the levying of duties implies. The amount obtained
by such unequal and indirect methods of revenue for the last fiscal year
was the enormous sum of $194,448,427, every dollar of which was in
reality but an additional tax drawn from the individuals who purchased
such imported merchandise. This manner of levying taxes would not matter
so much as a system of taxation did it fall equally upon the taxable
property of the country, upon which general taxes are levied, but nearly
$100,000,000 of the above sum was collected upon woolens, cottons,
sugar, molasses, coffee and tea, of all of which the poorest in common
with the richest are almost equal consumers.
Laborers of the United States! How like you this manner of filching your
hard-earned dollars, under the specious, fraudulent name of “protection
to home industries.” It is no wonder that your hard-earned wages will
scarcely supply your families’ necessities, when you are compelled to
pay such a sum upon the most common staple articles of general
consumption. It is no wonder you are continuously laborers, never being
able to become producers upon your own account, when you, who should
not, and, under general principles of taxation would not be called upon
to pay a single dollar as a direct tax, are thus burdened.
Thus it will be seen that the levying of specific duties on imported
goods is a most unequal and iniquitous manner of taxing the poor
laboring classes of the country to support the government, which is
administered to all intents and purposes in the interests of the rich,
and under which the really poor become poorer every year.
Nor are the other means to which the government resorts to support
itself entitled to very much more consideration than that of the
indirect one just mentioned. There is no equality to the general people
in any of them; and it is quite evident that the whole system of revenue
for the support of the government should be remodeled, so as to fall
where it should, in justice, upon the taxable property of the whole
Union. This done, and a sound financial system also inaugurated, the
lower classes of society would begin to be leveled up to the medium, and
the upper classes to be leveled down to the same basis of material
prosperity.
A system of taxation for the support of all government—town, city,
county, state and national—should be formulated and inaugurated, based
upon the proposition that all taxes should be general and none special.
All of these taxes, for the several purposes, should be assessed, levied
and collected by one set of revenue officers, and thereby an immense
system of economy introduced, whereby the collection of the revenues of
the country should not consume, by one-twentieth part, what is now
consumed in the almost innumerable methods which are adopted to obtain
the people’s money by indirect means. All of these subjects are for the
laboring classes to take up, examine, decide upon and rectify, and never
will they obtain the possibility of an equality until this is done.
Never can equality be possible under the forms through which government
is now administered and supported, and never will the laboring classes
become independent of the wealthy classes until the freedom, equality
and justice, which are the birthright of every citizen of the United
States, become possible of attainment under its government.