isfied with for performing the same
services. But it is not. In the first place, such a private company
would expect and receive about 3 per cent. on its capital in addition to
the mere working expenses. We do not know what the capital of the Post
Office is, but it must be very great, seeing that all the more important
offices are owned in fee simple. Secondly, a company would raise new
capital for new buildings and the purchase of more land, instead of
defraying the expense as if it were current working expenditure.
Thirdly, a company would not 'encourage thrift' by giving away upwards
of [L]700,000 a year to the depositors in the savings bank, by paying
2-1/2 per cent. Fourthly, in all sorts of ways the Post Office is not
conducted as a commercial enterprise would be. For example, it spends
more than a company would do in the less profitable districts.

"The only argument I know of in favour of treating the so-called 'net
revenue' alone as a tax, thus breaks down. If any part of the gross
revenue is a tax, the whole must be."--E. Cannan (_Memoranda on
Classification and Incidence_, p. 163).

[747] "The payment for the same service may be a price in one State, a
fee in a second, or a tax in a third.... The controlling consideration
in the classification of public revenues is not so much the conditions
attending the action of government or the kinds of businesses conducted
by the government, as the economic relations existing between the
individual and the government."--E. R. A. Seligman, _Essays in
Taxation_, p. 423.

[748] This has been held a justification for regarding the letter rate
as a whole as a pure tax:--

"A special service is no doubt rendered to each contributor of the tax,
as well as a general service to the whole community, by means of the
facilities of communication always available; but the charge is what is
technically known as a tax, and the fact that a particular, as well as a
general, service is rendered, does not alter the tax nature of the
charge. Apart from the theory it has also to be considered that the
productive portion of the Post Office revenue is derived from charges
where the cost is very little--from letters, for instance, in the
metropolitan district, or in and between great centres of population,
where the cost of conveyance and delivery does not exceed, probably,
one-tenth of a penny per letter, and the surplus of nine-tenths is spent
on other services of the Post Office on which