If we are in any doubt as to what is really the government of some particular country, we cannot do better than observe what person or persons in that country are clothed with authority to tax the people.  Mere names, as customarily applied to governments, are apt to be deceptive.  Thus in the middle of the eighteenth century France and England were both called “kingdoms;” but so far as kingly power was concerned, Louis XV. was a very different sort of a king from George II.  The French king could impose taxes on his people, and it might therefore be truly said that the government of France was in the king.  Indeed, it was Louis XV’s immediate predecessor who made the famous remark, “The state is myself.”  But the English king could not impose taxes; the only power in England that could do that was the House of Commons, and accordingly it is correct to say that in England, at the time of which we are speaking, the government was (as it still is) in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote:  Difference between taxation and robbery.] I say, then, the most essential feature of a government—­or at any rate the feature with which it is most important for us to become familiar at the start—­is its power of taxation.  The government is that which taxes.  If individuals take away some of your property for purposes of their own, it is robbery; you lose your money and get nothing in return.  But if the government takes away some of your property in the shape of taxes, it is supposed to render to you an equivalent in the shape of good government, something without which our lives and property would not be safe.  Herein seems to lie the difference between taxation and robbery.  When the highwayman points his pistol at me and I hand him my purse and watch, I am robbed.  But when I pay the tax-collector, who can seize my watch or sell my house over my head if I refuse, I am simply paying what is fairly due from me toward supporting the government.

[Sidenote:  Sometimes taxation is robbery.] In what we have been saying it has thus far been assumed that the government is in the hands of upright and competent men and is properly administered.  It is now time to observe that robbery may be committed by governments as well as by individuals.  If the business of governing is placed in the hands of men who have an imperfect sense of their duty toward the public, if such men raise money by taxation and then spend it on their own pleasures, or to increase their political influence, or for other illegitimate purposes, it is really robbery, just as much as if these men were to stand with pistols by the roadside and empty the wallets of people passing by.  They make a dishonest use of their high position as members of government, and extort money for which they make no return in the shape of services to the public.  History is full of such lamentable instances of misgovernment, and one of the most important uses of the study of history is to teach us how they have occurred, in order that we may learn how to avoid them, as far as possible, in the future.