Читать книгу Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins - Fiske John - Страница 39

In that strangely beautiful story, "The Cloister and the Hearth," in which Charles Reade has drawn such a vivid picture of human life at the close of the Middle Ages, there is a good description of the siege of a revolted town by the army of the Duke of Burgundy. Arrows whiz, catapults hurl their ponderous stones, wooden towers are built, secret mines are exploded. The sturdy citizens, led by a tall knight who seems to bear a charmed life, baffle every device of the besiegers. At length the citizens capture the brother of the duke's general, and the besiegers capture the tall knight, who turns out to be no knight after all, but just a plebeian hosier. The duke's general is on the point of ordering the tradesman who has made so much trouble to be shot, but the latter still remains master of the situation; for, as he dryly observes, if any harm comes to him, the enraged citizens will hang the general's brother. Some parley ensues, in which the shrewd hosier promises for the townsfolk to set free their prisoner and pay a round sum of money if the besieging army will depart and leave them in peace. The offer is accepted, and so the matter is amicably settled. As the worthy citizen is about to take his leave, the general ventures a word of inquiry as to the cause of the town's revolt. "What, then, is your grievance, my good friend?" Our hosier knight, though deft with needle and keen with lance, has a stammering tongue. He answers: "Tuta—tuta—tuta—tuta—too much taxes!"

[Sidenote: "Too much taxes."] "Too much taxes:" those three little words furnish us with a clue wherewith to understand and explain a great deal of history. A great many sieges of towns, so horrid to have endured though so picturesque to read about, hundreds of weary marches and deadly battles, thousands of romantic plots that have led their inventors to the scaffold, have owed their origin to questions of taxation. The issue between the ducal commander and the warlike tradesman has been tried over and over again in every country and in every age, and not always has the oppressor been so speedily thwarted and got rid of. The questions as to how much the taxes shall be, and who is to decide how much they shall be, are always and in every stage of society questions of most fundamental importance. And ever since men began to make history, a very large part of what they have done, in the way of making history, has been the attempt to settle these questions, whether by discussion or by blows, whether in council chambers or on the battlefield. The French Revolution of 1789, the most terrible political convulsion of modern times, was caused chiefly by "too much taxes," and by the fact that the people who paid the taxes were not the people who decided what the taxes were to be. Our own Revolution, which made the United States a nation independent of Great Britain, was brought on by the disputed question as to who was to decide what taxes American citizens must pay.

[Sidenote: What is taxation?] What, then, are taxes? The question is one which is apt to come up, sooner or later, to puzzle children. They find no difficulty in understanding the butcher's bill for so many pounds of meat, or the tailor's bill for so many suits of clothes, where the value received is something that can be seen and handled. But the tax bill, though it comes as inevitably as the autumnal frosts, bears no such obvious relation to the incidents of domestic life; it is not quite so clear what the money goes for; and hence it is apt to be paid by the head of the household with more or less grumbling, while for the younger members of the family it requires some explanation.

It only needs to be pointed out, however, that in every town some things are done for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, things which concern one person just as much as another. Thus roads are made and kept in repair, school-houses are built and salaries paid to school-teachers, there are constables who take criminals to jail, there are engines for putting out fires, there are public libraries, town cemeteries, and poor-houses. Money raised for these purposes, which are supposed to concern all the inhabitants, is supposed to be paid by all the inhabitants, each one furnishing his share; and the share which each one pays is his town tax.

[Sidenote: Taxation and eminent domain.] From this illustration it would appear that taxes are private property taken for public purposes; and in making this statement we come very near the truth. Taxes are portions of private property which a government takes for its public purposes. Before going farther, let us pause to observe that there is one other way, besides taxation, in which government sometimes takes private property for public purposes. Roads and streets are of great importance to the general public; and the government of the town or city in which you live may see fit, in opening a new street, to run it across your garden, or to make you move your house or shop out of the way for it. In so doing, the government either takes away or damages some of your property. It exercises rights over your property without asking your permission. This power of government over private property is called "the right of eminent domain." It means that a man's private interests must not be allowed to obstruct the interests of the whole community in which he lives. But in two ways the exercise of eminent domain is unlike taxation. In the first place, it is only occasional, and affects only certain persons here or there, whereas taxation goes on perpetually and affects all persons who own property. In the second place, when the government takes away a piece of your land to make a road, it pays you money in return for it; perhaps not quite so much as you believe the piece of land was worth in the market; the average human nature is doubtless such that men seldom give fair measure for measure unless they feel compelled to, and it is not easy to put a government under compulsion. Still it gives you something; it does not ask you to part with your property for nothing. Now in the case of taxation, the government takes your money and seems to make no return to you individually; but it is supposed to return to you the value of it in the shape of well-paved streets, good schools, efficient protection against criminals, and so forth.

[Sidenote: What is government?] In giving this brief preliminary definition of taxes and taxation, we have already begun to speak of "the government" of the town or city in which you live. We shall presently have to speak of other "governments,"—as the government of your state and the government of the United States; and we shall now and then have occasion to allude to the governments of other countries in which the people are free, as, for example, England; and of some countries in which the people are not free, as, for example, Russia. It is desirable, therefore, that we should here at the start make sure what we mean by "government," in order that we may have a clear idea of what we are talking about.

[Sidenote: The "ship of state."] Our verb "to govern" is an Old French word, one of the great host of French words which became a part of the English language between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, when so much French was spoken in England. The French word was gouverner, and its oldest form was the Latin gubernare, a word which the Romans borrowed from the Greek, and meant originally "to steer the ship." Hence it very naturally came to mean "to guide," "to direct," "to command." The comparison between governing and steering was a happy one. To govern is not to command as a master commands a slave, but it is to issue orders and give directions for the common good; for the interests of the man at the helm are the same as those of the people in the ship. All must float or sink together. Hence we sometimes speak of the "ship of state," and we often call the state a "commonwealth," or something in the weal or welfare of which all the people are alike interested.

Government, then, is the directing or managing of such affairs as concern all the people alike—as, for example, the punishment of criminals, the enforcement of contracts, the defence against foreign enemies, the maintenance of roads and bridges, and so on. To the directing or managing of such affairs all the people are expected to contribute, each according to his ability, in the shape of taxes. Government is something which is supported by the people and kept alive by taxation. There is no other way of keeping it alive.

[Sidenote: "The government."] The business of carrying on government—of steering the ship of state—either requires some special training, or absorbs all the time and attention of those who carry it on; and accordingly, in all countries, certain persons or groups of persons are selected or in some way set apart, for longer or shorter periods of time, to perform the work of government. Such persons may be a king with his council, as in the England of the twelfth century; or a parliament led by a responsible ministry, as in the England of to-day; or a president and two houses of congress, as in the United States; or a board of selectmen, as in a New England town. When we speak of "a government" or "the government," we often mean the group of persons thus set apart for carrying on the work of government. Thus, by "the Gladstone government" we mean Mr. Gladstone, with his colleagues in the cabinet and his Liberal majority in the House of Commons; and by "the Lincoln government," properly speaking, was meant President Lincoln, with the Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

[Sidenote: Whatever else it may be, "the government" is the power which taxes] "The government" has always many things to do, and there are many different lights in which we might regard it. But for the present there is one thing which we need especially to keep in mind. "The government" is the power which can rightfully take away a part of your property, in the shape of taxes, to be used for public purposes. A government is not worthy of the name, and cannot long be kept in existence, unless it can raise money by taxation, and use force, if necessary, in collecting its taxes. The only general government of the United States during the Revolutionary War, and for six years after its close, was the Continental Congress, which had no authority to raise money by taxation. In order to feed and clothe the army and pay its officers and soldiers, it was obliged to ask for money from the several states, and hardly ever got as much as was needed. It was obliged to borrow millions of dollars from France and Holland, and to issue promissory notes which soon became worthless. After the war was over it became clear that this so-called government could neither preserve order nor pay its debts, and accordingly it ceased to be respected either at home or abroad, and it became necessary for the American people to adopt a new form of government. Between the old Continental Congress and the government under which we have lived since 1789, the differences were many; but by far the most essential difference was that the new government could raise money by taxation, and was thus enabled properly to carry on the work of governing.

If we are in any doubt as to what is really the government of some particular country, we cannot do better than observe what person or persons in that country are clothed with authority to tax the people. Mere names, as customarily applied to governments, are apt to be deceptive. Thus in the middle of the eighteenth century France and England were both called "kingdoms;" but so far as kingly power was concerned, Louis XV. was a very different sort of a king from George II. The French king could impose taxes on his people, and it might therefore be truly said that the government of France was in the king. Indeed, it was Louis XV's immediate predecessor who made the famous remark, "The state is myself." But the English king could not impose taxes; the only power in England that could do that was the House of Commons, and accordingly it is correct to say that in England, at the time of which we are speaking, the government was (as it still is) in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Difference between taxation and robbery.] I say, then, the most essential feature of a government—or at any rate the feature with which it is most important for us to become familiar at the start—is its power of taxation. The government is that which taxes. If individuals take away some of your property for purposes of their own, it is robbery; you lose your money and get nothing in return. But if the government takes away some of your property in the shape of taxes, it is supposed to render to you an equivalent in the shape of good government, something without which our lives and property would not be safe. Herein seems to lie the difference between taxation and robbery. When the highwayman points his pistol at me and I hand him my purse and watch, I am robbed. But when I pay the tax-collector, who can seize my watch or sell my house over my head if I refuse, I am simply paying what is fairly due from me toward supporting the government.

[Sidenote: Sometimes taxation is robbery.] In what we have been saying it has thus far been assumed that the government is in the hands of upright and competent men and is properly administered. It is now time to observe that robbery may be committed by governments as well as by individuals. If the business of governing is placed in the hands of men who have an imperfect sense of their duty toward the public, if such men raise money by taxation and then spend it on their own pleasures, or to increase their political influence, or for other illegitimate purposes, it is really robbery, just as much as if these men were to stand with pistols by the roadside and empty the wallets of people passing by. They make a dishonest use of their high position as members of government, and extort money for which they make no return in the shape of services to the public. History is full of such lamentable instances of misgovernment, and one of the most important uses of the study of history is to teach us how they have occurred, in order that we may learn how to avoid them, as far as possible, in the future.

[Sidenote: The study of history.] When we begin in childhood the study of history we are attracted chiefly by anecdotes of heroes and their battles, kings and their courts, how the Spartans fought at Thermopylae, how Alfred let the cakes burn, how Henry VIII. beheaded his wives, how Louis XIV. used to live at Versailles. It is quite right that we should be interested in such personal details, the more so the better; for history has been made by individual men and women, and until we have understood the character of a great many of those who have gone before us, and how they thought and felt in their time, we have hardly made a fair beginning in the study of history. The greatest historians, such as Freeman and Mommsen, show as lively an interest in persons as in principles; and I would not give much for the historical theories of a man who should declare himself indifferent to little personal details.

[Sidenote: It is full of practical lessons;] Some people, however, never outgrow the child's notion of history as merely a mass of pretty anecdotes or stupid annals, without any practical bearing upon our own every-day life. There could not be a greater mistake. Very little has happened in the past which has not some immediate practical lessons for us; and when we study history in order to profit by the experience of our ancestors, to find out wherein they succeeded and wherein they failed, in order that we may emulate their success and avoid their errors, then history becomes the noblest and most valuable of studies. It then becomes, moreover, an arduous pursuit, at once oppressive and fascinating from its endless wealth of material, and abounding in problems which the most diligent student can never hope completely to solve.

[Sidenote: and helpful to those who would be good citizens.] [Sidenote: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.] Few people have the leisure to undertake a systematic and thorough study of history, but every one ought to find time to learn the principal features of the governments under which we live, and to get some inkling of the way in which these governments have come into existence and of the causes which have made them what they are. Some such knowledge is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship. Political questions, great and small, are perpetually arising, to be discussed in the newspapers and voted on at the polls; and it is the duty of every man and woman, young or old, to try to understand them. That is a duty which we owe, each and all of us, to ourselves and to our fellow-countrymen. For if such questions are not settled in accordance with knowledge, they will be settled in accordance with ignorance; and that is a kind of settlement likely to be fraught with results disastrous to everybody. It cannot be too often repeated that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. People sometimes argue as if they supposed that because our national government is called a republic and not a monarchy, and because we have free schools and universal suffrage, therefore our liberties are forever secure. Our government is, indeed, in most respects, a marvel of political skill; and in ordinary times it runs so smoothly that now and then, absorbed as most of us are in domestic cares, we are apt to forget that it will not run of itself. To insure that the government of the nation or the state, of the city or the township, shall be properly administered, requires from every citizen the utmost watchfulness and intelligence of which he is capable.