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38 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1923)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry38 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume XXXVIII] March, z923 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY THE EFFECTS OF TAXATION BY the effects of taxation we may mean two things. In the narrower sense the term denotes the immediate consequence of each of the steps connected with the shifting of taxation: thus shifting is the effect of impact and in- cidence is the effect of shifting. In the wider sense, however, the effect of taxation denotes any of the subsequent results produced on the relations of individuals or classes. It includes all the possible consequences engendered by a change in the economic equilibrium. Shifting is the process; incidence is the result; changes in the production, distribution, or con- sumption of wealth are the effects. In a still wider sense, the effects of taxation even transcend the economic field. Far-reaching, often, are the political effects. Magna Carta was partly the result of the efforts of the nobles to retain for themselves the powers of taxation sought to be arrogated by the monarch. Many a political disturbance, from the time of Jack Cade's rebellion to the French Revolution, is to be ascribed primarily to taxation; the independence of the United States itself was in no small measure due to this same cause. It would, in fact, be possible to write history in terms of taxation, and to claim that the evolution in governmental forms keeps pace with that of taxation. The Romans con- sidered the direct tax as a badge of slavery (nota captivitatis): Adam Smith contends, on the other hand, that taxation is a badge not of slavery but of liberty. The eighteenth-century French were intoxicated by this idea. Montesquieu claims that the wider the liberty, the greater is the possibility of taxation. On peut lever les tributs plus forts en proportion de I [Number r