The extreme temperance section argue that even such Licensing Boards—directly elected by the ratepayers for the specific purpose—would not meet the requirements of the case, and that nothing short of a popular vote can be accepted. But why should the representative system be abolished and a direct vote established in this case, any more than in the equally burning questions settled every day by Parliament, and the lesser but still important matters decided by town councils and school boards? We in England long ago made up our minds that the most excellent way to get public work done is to choose the best men, give them the requisite authority, and then allow them to do the duty to which they are called. And if we can disestablish a church, revolutionize the land system, or reform our institutions from top to bottom through our representatives, without a direct vote of the people, the question of renewing public-house licences can scarcely demand so exceptional a process as is by some suggested.
My answer, therefore, to the question, “How is Local Option to be worked?” as well as to the kindred temperance question, “How is Sunday closing to be settled?” is, “By means of licensing boards, directly elected by the ratepayers.” And if this solution be adopted, our licensing system will be placed upon a basis at once more safe and more free from friction or the likelihood of injustice than any other that has been proposed.
XXIII.—WHY AND HOW ARE WE TAXED?
Taxes are the price we pay for being governed: they defray interest upon money borrowed and wages for protection and service. The fact that they are called by a name which is to many obnoxious, or that they are handed to the State instead of to an individual, ought not to blind us to their real nature—that they are the price of services rendered. The name is nothing. In churches the money we pay is called a pew-rent or an offertory; in clubs it is a subscription; to doctors or lawyers a fee; to tradesmen a price; to railway companies a fare; for personal services wages; for the loan of a house rent; for life or fire insurance a premium; and for water a rate. All are in a measure taxes; and if it be answered that the difference is that these payments are voluntary, may not the same be said of much that is called “indirect taxation”?
When the subject is considered, there are three questions which naturally demand reply.
1. Why are we taxed?
2. How are we taxed? and
3. How ought we to be taxed?
To the first question some answer has already been given. Put in the simplest fashion, the reply would be that it is cheaper to pay taxes and be taken care of than not to pay them and have to take care of ourselves. As members of an organized society, we have to provide for external protection and internal service—for the army and navy as a safeguard against enemies from without, for the officers of the law as a safeguard against depredators within, for the means of government, for education, and for a large number of other matters designed for the security of our persons and property and for the welfare and advancement of the community. We have further to pay the interest upon the National Debt—money borrowed by the State at times of emergency to prosecute such wars as Parliament had sanctioned.
In point of fact, taxes are a substitution for personal service. The State in England once compelled this as a means of raising an army; and, though this form of personal service was long ago commuted by the payment of a sufficient sum through taxation for the maintenance of a standing force, the State has only waived, not abrogated, the right. Even as lately as the last century people in our country districts had to give six days in the year to the repair of such highways as were under the management of the justices of the peace. In the one case the personal service has been commuted into a tax, in the other into a rate—the difference being that a tax is imperially and a rate locally levied—it being found that forced labour of the kind indicated is more wasteful and less efficacious than hired labour; and, if any want to know how wasteful and how inefficient, they can find abundant illustrations in the history of the old régime in France, or that of the Egyptian fellaheen.