The measures which the
central and local governments could take for the purpose of adapting our
economic and social institutions to the national economic and social
interest would not be exhausted by the adoption of the proposed policy
of reconstruction; and several of these supplementary means, which have
been proposed to accomplish the same object, deserve consideration. Some
of these proposals look towards a further use of the power of taxation,
possessed by both the state and the Federal governments; but it must not
be supposed that in their entirety they constitute a complete system of
taxation. They are merely examples, like the protective tariff, of the
use of the power of taxation to combine a desirable national object with
the raising of money for the expenses of government.
It may be assumed that the adoption of the policy outlined in the last
section would gradually do away with certain undesirable inequalities in
the distribution of wealth: but this process, it is scarcely necessary
to add, would do nothing to mitigate existing inequalities.
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