In view of the pressing importance of the subject I deem it my duty to
again urge its consideration.
The income of the Government, by its increased volume and through
economies in its collection, is now more than ever in excess of public
necessities. The application of the surplus to the payment of such
portion of the public debt as is now at our option subject to
extinguishment, if continued at the rate which has lately prevailed,
would retire that class of indebtedness within less than one year from
this date. Thus a continuation of our present revenue system would soon
result in the receipt of an annual income much greater than necessary to
meet Government expenses, with no indebtedness upon which it could be
applied. We should then be confronted with a vast quantity of money, the
circulating medium of the people, hoarded in the Treasury when it should
be in their hands, or we should be drawn into wasteful public
extravagance, with all the corrupting national demoralization which
follows in its train.
But it is not the simple existence of this surplus and its threatened
attendant evils which furnish the strongest argument against our present
scale of Federal taxation. Its worst phase is the exaction of such a
surplus through a perversion of the relations between the people and
their Government and a dangerous departure from the rules which limit
the right of Federal taxation.
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