nevertheless seems to feel relieved by it.  Allowing for this undervaluation, we may say that a man worth $50,000 commonly pays not less than $500 for his yearly taxes, or about one fifth of the annual income of the property.  We thus begin to see what a heavy burden taxes are, and how essential to good government it is that citizens should know what their money goes for, and should be able to exert some effective control over the public expenditures.  Where the rate of taxation in a town rises to a very high point, such as two and a half or three per cent, the prosperity of the town is apt to be seriously crippled.  Traders and manufacturers move away to other towns, or those who would otherwise come to the town in question stay away, because they cannot afford to use up all their profits in paying taxes.  If such a state of things is long kept up, the spirit of enterprise is weakened, the place shows signs of untidiness and want of thrift, and neighbouring towns, once perhaps far behind it in growth, by and by shoot ahead of it and take away its business.

[Sidenote:  The “magic fund” delusion.] Within its proper sphere, government by town-meeting is the form of government most effectively under watch and control.  Everything is done in the full daylight of publicity.  The specific objects for which public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to declare his opinions.  Under this form of government people are not so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms.  I refer especially to the delusion that “the Government” is a sort of mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of wealth, and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of “the People.”  Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues.  It is the prolific root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn.  In point of fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever existed upon the earth.  No government has ever yet used any money for public purposes which it did not first take from its own people,—­unless when it may have plundered it from some other people in victorious warfare.

The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that “the Government” is “the People.”  Although he may think loosely about the government of his state or the still more remote government at Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small value.