outline of the various methods of taxation practiced in Switzerland. As
in all countries, they are complex. But certain significant results of
direct legislation are to be pointed out. In all the cantons there is a
strong tendency to raise revenue from direct, as opposed to indirect,
taxes, and from progressive taxation according to fortune. The
following, from an editorial in the "Christian Union," February 12,
1891, so justly and briefly puts the facts that I prefer printing it
rather than words of my own, which might lie under suspicion of being
tinged with the views of a radical: "With the democratic revolution of
1830 the people demanded that direct taxation should be introduced, and
since the greater revolution of 1848 they have been steadily replacing
the indirect taxes upon necessities by direct taxes upon wealth. In
Zurich, for example--where in the first part of this century there were
no direct taxes--in 1832 indirect taxation supplied four-fifths of the
local revenue; to-day it supplies but one-seventeenth. The canton raises
thirty-two francs per capita by direct taxation where it raises but two
by indirect taxation. This change has accompanied the transformation of
Switzerland from a nominal to a real democracy. By the use of direct
taxation, where every man knows just how much he pays, and by the use of
the Referendum, where the sense of justice of the entire public is
expressed as to how tax burdens should be distributed, Switzerland has
developed a system by which the division of society into the harmfully
rich and wretchedly poor has been checked, if not prevented. In the
most advanced cantons, as has been brought out by Professor Cohn in the
'Political Science Quarterly,' the taxes, both on incomes and on
property, are progressive. In each case a certain minimum is exempted.
In the case of incomes, the progression is such that the largest incomes
pay a rate five times as heavy as the very moderate ones; while in the
case of property, the largest fortunes pay twice as much as the
smallest. The tax upon inheritances has been most strongly developed. In