Clarksville Chronicle

Lop off the Taxes.

There is one point upon which there is getting to be almost absolute unanimity, and that is, that our taxes, particularly those of the Federal Government, must be enormously reduced. This pretended reduction at the last session of Congress of eighty millions of dollars per annum is a delusion and a sham. More than four hundred millions of dollars will still be collected from the hard earnings of the people, through the custom duties and those derived from the internal revenue. The N. Y. Times, ultra Radical as it is, says on this point:

"But Mr. Boutwell's point of view is not that from which the people look at the subject. His is the official view—theirs is the view that is forced upon them by the embarrassments of business and the depression under which industry staggers. The load he would fasten upon them they protest they cannot carry."

Of the crushing, overwhelming amount of our taxation, the Philadelphia Inquirer, another Republican organ says:

"But this is but a drop compared to the ocean of taxes that has been emptied into the Treasury since 1861. Literally, the capital and labor of the country have been poured like water into that receptacle. It is estimated—and not over-estimated, we believe—that during the last ten years the people have contributed, in one way or another to the country, over four hundred millions annually, or in the aggregate between four and five thousand millions.

There is only one matter of surprise in all this, which is, that the country has one dollar left to lay beside another."