"The last-named board must give to the legislative body information of all abuses, defalcations, and all cases of responsibility, and they may propose measures advantageous to the republic. The legislative body may suspend or remove the commissioners."

354 says: "No one can be forced to contribute towards the support of any religious service. The republic pays nothing towards it."

370. "No citizen can wholly or in part refuse compensation or a salary, which is assigned to him by law, by virtue of his office."

The Constitution of 1799-republican in name, really Napoleonic-requires, Art. XXV., that new laws must be "proposed by the government, communicated to the tribunate, and decreed by the legislative body," so that the initiation of all new taxes is with the Executive.

Art. XLV. says: "The government regulates the revenues and expenditures according to the provision of the law which establishes every year the amount of both."

By Art. LVI. " one of the ministers is specially charged with the administration of the public treasure; he secures the revenues, and regulates the raising of money and the payment approved by law." The three requisites of the Constitution of 1795, for a payment from the treasury, are also adopted in this. It provides for a commission of national accounts, for regulating and correcting all revenues and expenditures.

The Constitution (Charter) of 1814, provided by Louis XVIII., says:

Art. XLVIII. "No taxes can be levied and raised unless they be assented to by both chambers and sanctioned by the king (a sort of reciprocal check).

XLIX. "The tax on real estate can be granted only for one year. The indirect imposts may be granted for several years." LXXI. "No grant of title and rank by the king can release from the burthens and duties of society."

XVII. "Laws regarding taxes must first be brought before the chamber of deputies."

We call the special attention of the reader to these several provisions. They are in some respects inferior in protecting the citizen against arbitrary taxation, but in others again, superior to those of our states. The verbiage has the same general characteristics; it is plain, however, that those who drafted them were much clearer in their views as to what they wished to abrogate and guard against as known evils, than they were as to measures whose evils lay in an unknown

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future. The declaration that an obligation of honor rests on all citizens to be tax-payers, modern science would express in more definite terms, but it fully acknowledges the principle. An excellent idea is the prescription of central bureaus of accounts. The Germans have this in their "Rechnungs höfe.” Making legislators responsible for "money squandered," is a sound provision. The attempt to make three days' labor a normal tax basis is worthy of careful consideration and closer elaboration. So is the placing into the hands of the executive authorities the collection of taxes and the power to issue decrees and orders, as well as instructions in relation thereto. The attempted abolition of judicial fees was found impracticable and unfair; but it should be revived in an amended form, by prohibiting excessive fees, and making cost of stationery and time the criterion. Their amount is often in England and America a denial of justice. The very word "costs" should revive the idea of the old rule or standard.

The provisions against local public debts is as weak as that of New York, but does not open as wide the door to constructive inherent powers. The clause against tax exemptions under cover of grants from the king, is a wise rule; it should be extended to all grants, charters, corporations, &c., including specially those from the legislature.

In closing this chapter we must mention the fact, that in all our researches we find taxation-antecedent to our age-to be (subjugations and war contributions excepted) the result of agreements and compacts, either in writing or by common law; while modern taxation is mostly based on the assumption of more or less arbitrary (sovereign) power. The only difference being, that in Europe it was a sovereign king and parliament, that levied the taxes, now it is a sovereign legislature and people. We cannot see then in our American Constitutions greater safeguards against arbitrary taxation, than in the old European institutions; on the contrary, society is less protected against government. And to this we must add the observation, that the few modern improvements in tax laws are not American inventions. This is specially true of our municipal taxation. As to it we have not only removed the circumvallations of the old cities, but we have built new causeways for popular sovereignty, so as to enable it to invade and plunder our municipalities in the garb of public benefactions.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PUBLIC CAREERS IN AMERICA.

"Extremum Malorum tot fortissimi viri, proditoris opem invocantur."-Tacitus.

SINCERE men no longer deny, that the offices of trust and profit are now filled, in the United States, with much more inferior men, than as compared with former periods; indeed, it is admitted, that if we want to find political conditions like unto ours, anywhere, we have to search in the records of the worst phases of public administration, which history affords. The quotation at the head of this chapter fits our case; for with us, good men have to invoke the co-operation of mean men to have a public career. And the roots of the evil grow from that pernicious assumption, that there is a universal qualification for office. Under it the whole public service has now become either a gratuitous or a false distribution of wealth. The greatest personal merit and talent must be abject to the respective party multitudes, to gain distinction; the ethical sense, the only one that makes political rule safe, has been blunted. Good citizens have either to pass through a degrading ordeal of abuse and villification, or ward it off by subserviency; and the popular mind has been so drilled into the belief that killing great men by their votes is preserving liberty, that all efforts towards an efficient public service are looked upon as contumacy to legitimate popular power. And thus the commonwealth presents the paradox of the theory on the one side, that all men are qualified for every office, and the practice on the other, which treats all specially qualified men as dangerous if placed in power; and this, the more, the abler they are.

To show the loss America has sustained, because its public mind has been miseducated as to the reciprocal rights and duties between the body of society and its prominent public men, we think it well to place before the reader a table giving the time wasted in retiring too early by the best personages of America:

Washington was retired 4th of his adult life, 12 years.

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We might add to the list hundreds of the very best officers of the Revolution, dozens of diplomatists, many cabinet officers, senators, &c. Many of these were forced into an absence from public life, most galling to them, because they knew, that they had capacities, that ought to be employed in public affairs. Public conscience has sought to relieve itself of the odium that must always attach to a society, that fails to give honorable employment to proven talents and integrity, by our miserable pension systems; and by giving preferences to soldiers at elections and appointments, as if a vicious generosity could ever atone for the neglect of wise economic justice.

The logic, or rather illogic, of the thing rests on the false premise, that a people have any more justification for conferring or denying office from arbitrary reasons, than kings or nobles. From it has flown the decline in our civil service, which distresses us. But, we ask: Could, under this premise, things be otherwise? Had we based our government on the principle: that it is the bounden duty of all governments to place no one in a public position, who is not technically qualified by education and for his upright character; and we should now be, where France, Belgium, Switzerland, indeed all Europe except Russia and Turkey, are; that is, we would have a public service officered, with few exceptions, by qualified men. Our rule was the reverse of theirs, to wit: that the people are unfree as long as there is one officer not subject to arbitrary popular will. Theirs was, that society is unfree, as long as there is an officer subject to any arbitrary public will. And the result of this difference is that while we have produced the servitude of the better elements of our society under those of the inferior forces, they have freed their society from the arbitrary rules of their several potentates. Hence whilst they have raised up a body of public men, who stand upright before power, and yet serve the public faithfully, we have nurtured a body of demagogues, who cringe to the voters before the election, and domineer over and defraud them afterwards. We have made them truckle to low men, and wonder that they are now mean themselves. But not alone that; we have so organized our parties, that the gate

keepers to all the avenues for a public career are bad characters, who take toll of all candidates for office and spend what they get corruptly. Neither the highest intellect nor the greatest integrity can enter on a public career without submitting to both personal humiliation and pecuniary spoliation. And yet we are astonished to see our great and good men cheek by chowl with the little and the bad men of the land. And if anybody tells us, that this state of things is caused by popular folly and a perverted public spirit, we get angry at them and refuse to learn, that we cannot have good public administrations as long as we continue in our false public course.

The fact, that no man can have in the United States a successful career unless he joins forces with low mercenary partisans, and at the same time coincides with some raw and crude public opinion, is the galling servitude, which honesty, capacity, and intelligence has to undergo in the United States. How the revolutionary Fathers could initiate such a degradation of American talent and integrity, when one of their most reasonable complaints against England was, the neglect of native American ability and cleverness, is next to incomprehensible. They knew the abuses caused by patronage in the British service; had indeed felt it in many ways in the colonial public administrations; for they speak in the Declaration of Independence of "swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." They inveigh in the same document against "making judges dependent on the king's will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries," and yet they erected a President with a patronage greater and more arbitrary than that of any king; and intrusted nearly the whole remaining public service to a popular will bound by no qualification. Their successors did even worse; they took from the regular authorities and political forces—we mean the Government of the whole people-the little tendency towards technically qualified officials, that still existed as an instinctive kabit, and transferred nearly the whole civil service to the use of parties for the payment of political services. We can exempt but two men from this falsification and decomposition of public administration-Washington and Gallatin. With all the rest, there is only a difference in the degree of culpability in entailing upon the country a mutually corrupting system of suffrage and office-hunting. From it has sprung a body of public men, whose public life has all the vices of royal favoritism, of aristocratic patronage and clerical intrigue, but very seldom the virtue and honor of true public men. Our idol was a self-worship of a democracy, that, like all idol-worship, has been blind to the