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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?

and make pay rental thousands of lots that have never paidanything, give active employment to all the mechanics youhave, and besides bring thousands from other places.

“ Let us go a little further and see how this policy affects alland everybody in the city. These newcomers get their houses,and then they want furniture, and they patronize the furnitureman ; they want a carriage or wagon for family use, and theypatronize your carriage man ; and then horses, and patronizethe horse man, and then the blacksmith to shoe them ; andthen the retail dry-goods houses, mantua-makers, milliners,grocerymen, butchers —and, in short, every kind of retailestablishment throughout the city, thereby giving vigor, life,and thrift to all. And thus it would go on, until, before youare aware of it, you would have a city of thousands of people,and be worth and pay a rental on hundreds of millions of dol-lars. Then where would be your city and county debt, and anecessity for a high rate of taxation ?' and where would be theoppression, when you have got four times as much to paywith ? ”

In a report of the law committee of the CommonCouncil of Philadelphia , submitted February 16, 1871, wefind a valuable historical review of the tax laws of Phila­ delphia , under the government of William Penn and hissuccessors in the colonial government.

“These laws were framed to avoid repeating errors whichhad been proven by long experience in Great Britain and theContinental countries. Anxious to foster trade, commerce, andindustry, and make the province the home of a free people, thefounder of Pennsylvania came with a plan of government.The earliest enactments of direct tax laws show that he andthose who followed him were as careful, in this regard, inprofiting by the most enlightened views of his time, as they