ebts.

So marked has been this class legislation in the interest of capital,
that a Senator of the United States, Mr. Wallace of Pennsylvania, says,
"From the beginning of the present Administration down to the
adjournment of Congress in August, 1876, every financial statute has
had but one purpose, and that purpose to increase the value of the
bonded indebtedness of the Government." Statistics show how insecure is
business, on what vicious principles it is transacted, and how rapidly
property is concentrating in the hands of a few. In 1874 there were
5,830 failures for a total of $155,000,000, and in 1875 the failures
increased to 7,740, aggregating a loss of $201,000,000. In both North
and South there has been a frightful increase of indebtedness by towns
and cities, counties and States--thirty-eight States owe an aggregate
of $382,000,000--so that taxpayers groan in purse and spirit, and are
deeply concerned to find a way of honest payment.

Taxation has been and is a potent instrument of wrong and corruption.
To pay the national debt increased taxation was, of course, necessary
and proper, but taxation should have been adjusted to the rights of
honest creditors and the lessened pecuniary ability of taxpayers. The
Federal and local taxes of the last eleven years, according to high
authority, amount to not less than $7,500,000,000. Never in modern
times was revenue collected in such a complicated and ruinous manner.
Mr. Curtis tells us one-fourth of the revenue is lost in the
collection. If the collection and expenditure of revenue be the tests
for determining the wisdom of a government, then ours is not "the best
the world ever saw."

Extravagant expenditure is closely connected with enormous revenues.
Economy of administration is a lost art. Federal expenditure in 1860,
exclusive of payment of public debt, was $1.94 per head. In 1870 it was
$3.52 per head, and in 1875 $3.38. The $4,500,000,000 of Federal
taxes[7] of the last eleven years have not been exclusively
appropriated to reduction of debt and defraying necessary expenditures.
Officials have been needlessly multiplied, jobs have been created,
peculation is common, and millions have been squandered on contracts
made with hungry partisans. Such an exhaustion of national resources is
governmental robbery. In the purer days it was a political maxim that
no more money was to be taken from the people than was necessary for
the constitutional and economical wants