that citizens should know what their money goes for, and should be
able to exert some effective control over the public expenditures.
Where the rate of taxation in a town rises to a very high point, such
as two and a half or three per cent, the prosperity of the town is apt
to be seriously crippled. Traders and manufacturers move away to other
towns, or those who would otherwise come to the town in question stay
away, because they cannot afford to use up all their profits in paying
taxes. If such a state of things is long kept up, the spirit of
enterprise is weakened, the place shows signs of untidiness and want
of thrift, and neighbouring towns, once perhaps far behind it in
growth, by and by shoot ahead of it and take away its business.

[Sidenote: The "magic fund" delusion.]
Within its proper sphere, government by town-meeting is the form of
government most effectively under watch and control. Everything is
done in the full daylight of publicity. The specific objects for which
public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the presence of
everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of
the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to
declare his opinions. Under this form of government people are not
so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms. I refer
especially to the delusion that "the Government" is a sort of
mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of wealth,
and able to do all manner of things for the benefit of "the People."
Some such notion as this, more often implied than expressed, is very
common, and it is inexpressibly dear to demagogues. It is the prolific
root from which springs that luxuriant crop of humbug upon which
political tricksters thrive as pigs fatten upon corn. In point of
fact no such government, armed with a magic fund of its own, has ever
existed upon the earth. No government has ever yet used any money