CHARITY, TAXATION, AND PAUPERISM.

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damming and bailing out, will continue to overflow us,until we relieve the farmer from taxes upon what heproduces and upon what he consumes, and make it pos-sible for him to accumulate a competence.

We must encourage the production of wealth, if we areto alleviate poverty.

Now, all wealth, and even all capital, comes from laborexercised upon land or upon other natural opportuni-ties ; and, as the resources of nature are practically afixed quantity, any increase of actual wealth must comefrom labor. All economists are agreed that taxes uponraw materials or upon labor are added, and added with aprofit, to the price of the goods produced. These prices,so increased, are paid by the consumers of the goods—the workers, whose work upon the land is the source ofwealth.

Nor are these taxes an insignificant factor. A savingof a hundred dollars of taxes per year will make afarmer’s family rich and independent at the end offorty years. The little burden is heavy for the littleman.’

But it may be said that, were the life made ever soprofitable and attractive, we could not all be farmers.We do not need to be: farming is but one form of rustic

1 The land tax, the poll tax, the best tithes of the produce for the priest,twentieths, military service, taxes on consumption, labor on the highways,crushed the peasantry.—Reign of Louis XVI. , Bancroft’s U.S., vol. vii.,ch. 7. ~