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Show burden will be arduous enough for many generations in spite of every ev-ery rigid economy that can be exercised now. That burden will be unbearable if government does not set up every safeguard for the prevention of wasteful expenditure. I THE AMERICAN WAY DEATH AND TAXES of wind anc rain, enduring heat and cold, they have fled from the cruel scourge; in most cases to die. Of these families which were here in my grandfather's time there remains not more than one in ten; of those here in my father's time, not more than two or three; and of those still here in my own time, not more than four or five. They are all dead or gone elsewhere; while we, the snake-catchers, alone survive. '' 'Harsh tyrants sweep down upon us and throw everybody end everything, even to the brute beasts, into paroxysms of terror and disorder. But I get up in the morning and look into the jar where my snakes are kept; and if they are still there, I lie down at night in peace. At the appointed appoint-ed time I take care that they are fit to -be handed in; and when that is done I retire to enjoy the produce of my farm and complete the allotted span of my existence. Only twice a year have I to risk my life. The rest is peaceful enough and not to be compared with the daily round of annoyance which falls to the share of my fellow-villagers. And even though I were to die now in this em-employ, em-employ, I should still have outlived out-lived almost all of my contemporaries. contem-poraries. Can I then complain?' "The story gave me food for much sad reflection. I have always al-ways doubted the saying of Confucius Con-fucius that "bad government is worse than a tiger' but now I feel its truth. Alas! who would think that a tax-collector is more venomous ven-omous than a snake?" ' Liu Tsung Yuan told it eleven hundred years ago. It always has been, is now and ever will be, an immutable law of economics that when governments squander the substance of the people, thereby necessitating the levying of back-breaking back-breaking taxes, the people come to abhor those taxes more than the risk of death itself. No patriotic patri-otic American quibbles about one single necessary penny the government gov-ernment is spending to prosecute the war successfully and to speed its end. But, it behooves our legislators to see to it that not a I single penny is wasted. The tax Liu Tsung Yuan, a Chinese of the early Ninth Century, recorded record-ed for posterity a story that every ev-ery elected representative (federal, (feder-al, state and municipal) should read and re-read. Here it is as told by Yuan and translated into English by H. A. Giles: "In the wilds of Hu Kuang there is an extraordinary kind of snake, having a black body with white rings. Deadly fatal, even to the grass and trees it may chance to touch; in man, its bite is absolutely incurable. Yet if caught and prepared, when dry, in the form of cakes, the flesh of this snake will soothe excitement, heal leprous sores, remove sloughing flesh, and expel ex-pel evil spirits. And so it came about that the court physician, acting under Imperial orders, expected ex-pected from each family a return of two of these snakes every year; but as few persons were able to comply with the demand, it was subsequently made known that the return of snakes was to be considered in lieu of the usual " taxes. Thereupon there ensued a general stampede among the people peo-ple of those parts. "However, there was one man whose family had lived there for three generations; and from him I obtained the following information: infor-mation: 'My grandfather lost his life in snake catching. So did my father. And during the twelve years that I have been engaged in the same way, death has several sev-eral times come very near to me.' "He was deeply moved during this recital; but when I asked him if I should state his sad case to the authorities and apply for him to be allowed to pay taxes in the regular manner, he burst into tears and said: 'Alas! sir, you would take away my means of livelihood altogether. The misery mis-ery of this state is as nothing when compared with the misery of that. Formerly, under the ordinary or-dinary conditions uf life, we suffered suf-fered greatly; but for the past three generations we have been settled in this district, now some sixty years since. During that period my fellow-villagers have become more and more impoverished. impover-ished. Their substance has been devoured, and in beggary they have gone weeping and wailing away. Exposed to the inclemency |
