little revenue; and although the range of taxation was soon extended, the whole receipts from all sources by the Government for the second year of the war, from excise, income, stamp, and all other internal taxes, were less than $42,000,000; and that, too, at a time when the expenditures were in excess $60,000,000 per month, or at the rate of over $700,000,000 per annum.  And as showing how novel was this whole subject of direct and internal taxation to the people, and how completely the Government officials were lacking in all experience in respect to it, the following incident may be noted.  The Secretary of the Treasury, in his report for 1863, stated that, with a view of determining his resources, he employed a very competent person, with the aid of practical men, to estimate the probable amount of revenue to be derived from each department of internal taxation for the previous year.  The estimate arrived at was $85,000,000, but the actual receipts were only $37,000,000.”

Now, no doubt, this might have happened under a Parliamentary government.  But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter.  All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded.  The light would have come from above, not from below—­it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly the reverse happened in America.  Mr. Wells goes on to say:—­

“The people of the loyal States were, however, more determined and in earnest in respect to this matter of taxation than were their rulers; and before long the popular discontent at the existing state of things was openly manifest.  Every where the opinion was expressed that taxation in all possible forms should immediately, and to the largest extent, be made effective and imperative; and Congress spurred up, and right fully relying on public sentiment to sustain their action, at last took up the matter resolutely and in earnest, and devised and inaugurated a system of internal and direct taxation, which for its universality and peculiarities has probably no parallel in anything which has heretofore been recorded in civil history, or is likely to be experienced hereafter.  The one necessity of the situation was revenue, and to obtain it speedily and in large amounts through taxation the only principle recognised—­if it can be called a principle—­was akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, ’Wherever you see a head hit it’.  Wherever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, or a source of income, tax it!  And so an edict went forth to this effect, and the people cheerfully submitted.  Incomes under $5,000 were taxed 5 per cent., with an exemption of $600 and house rent actually paid; these exemptions being allowed on this ground, that they represented an amount sufficient at the time to enable a small family to procure the bare necessaries of life, and thus take out from the operation of the law all those who were dependent upon each day’s earnings to supply each day’s needs.  Incomes in excess of $5,000 and not in excess of $10,000 were taxed 2 1/2 per cent. in addition; and incomes over $10,000 5 per cent. additional, without any abeyance or exemptions whatever.”