thod of raising money in the poorer States, where land already bears
its full burden and little personal property can be found.

Commissions of inquiry on this whole subject of taxation are
continually being appointed--we have had two in Massachusetts in
the past ten years--and their recommendations nearly always prove
unacceptable. The probable scientific answer, that you must only tax
property and not money or the evidence of property, and that if direct
taxation thereby becomes too burdensome we must reduce our rate of
expenditure, is a conclusion our legislators are yet unwilling to
accept. The taxation of corporations presents a different problem
and we shall therefore leave it for special consideration with that
subject. The matter of betterment taxes may be dismissed with a
word, as it is hardly, in theory, taxation at all, but rather using
municipal agencies to collect the cost, or part of the cost, of a
local work or benefit. It is, of course, closely connected with the
subject of eminent domain. That is to say, only a public use, or at
least a general local benefit, can justify a betterment tax. There is
still considerable legislation on this matter, confined generally to
the objects of securing a jury trial, or at least a public hearing, on
the amount of the assessment, defining the purposes for which it
may be imposed, as, for instance, paving, sewers, water-works where
public, and--perhaps the most contested case of all--that of parks or
pleasure-grounds; and providing that the amount of betterment taxes
imposed shall not exceed one-half the value of the improvement of the
property, and shall never exceed the amount paid as damages when part
of the owner's land is taken.

By far the greatest mass of legislation relating to property is
concerned with the police power and modern extensions thereof. It
is also by far the most dangerous to property rights, and this for
several reasons: firstly, it involves the destruction of property
without any compensation whatever, not upon payment of damages, as in
the ease of eminent domain; secondly, on account of the extraordinary
extension by our modern legislation of this power to matters not
hitherto deemed necessary for the safety, health, or even the
well-being of the public, vague as the legal application of the last
word is; thirdly, and perhaps most important, because the police
power is usually exercised without any common-law guarantees, without
process of la