[Sidenote:  What is taxation?] What, then, are taxes?  The question is one which is apt to come up, sooner or later, to puzzle children.  They find no difficulty in understanding the butcher’s bill for so many pounds of meat, or the tailor’s bill for so many suits of clothes, where the value received is something that can be seen and handled.  But the tax bill, though it comes as inevitably as the autumnal frosts, bears no such obvious relation to the incidents of domestic life; it is not quite so clear what the money goes for; and hence it is apt to be paid by the head of the household with more or less grumbling, while for the younger members of the family it requires some explanation.

It only needs to be pointed out, however, that in every town some things are done for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, things which concern one person just as much as another.  Thus roads are made and kept in repair, school-houses are built and salaries paid to school-teachers, there are constables who take criminals to jail, there are engines for putting out fires, there are public libraries, town cemeteries, and poor-houses.  Money raised for these purposes, which are supposed to concern all the inhabitants, is supposed to be paid by all the inhabitants, each one furnishing his share; and the share which each one pays is his town tax.

[Sidenote:  Taxation and eminent domain.] From this illustration it would appear that taxes are private property taken for public purposes; and in making this statement we come very near the truth.  Taxes are portions of private property which a government takes for its public purposes.  Before going farther, let us pause to observe that there is one other way, besides taxation, in which government sometimes takes private property for public purposes.  Roads and streets are of great importance to the general public; and the government of the town or city in which you live may see fit, in opening a new street, to run it across your garden, or to make you move your house or shop out of the way for it.  In so doing, the government either takes away or damages some of your property.  It exercises rights over your property without asking your permission.  This power of government over private property is called “the right of eminent domain.”  It means that a man’s private interests must not be allowed to obstruct the interests of the whole community in which he lives.  But in two ways the exercise of eminent domain is unlike taxation.  In the first place, it is only occasional, and affects only certain persons here or there, whereas taxation goes on perpetually and affects all persons who own property.  In the second place, when the government takes away a piece of your land to make a road, it pays you money in return for it; perhaps not quite so much as you believe the piece of land was worth in the market; the average human nature is doubtless such that men seldom give fair measure for measure unless they feel