Note B — A STATE OFFICIAL ON EXCESSIVE TAXATION. By FRANKLIN SMITH.

From the mass of proofs of this statement in my possession I will select only one. In a call for a convention at Portland, Me., on the 10th of June last, of all persons “interested in the revision of the present system of State taxation and a more economical management of the State affairs,” it is stated that “the expenses of the State have increased fifty per cent in ten years, while the wealth and population of the State have steadily declined.” The object of the convention was “to protest against the course of extravagance that is rapidly bringing reproach upon the government of the State and reducing the farmers and taxpayers to automatons to grind out revenue to be absorbed by a rapacious and ever-multiplying horde of office-holders, who devour the people’s substance as fast as they produce it.” After showing how “once prosperous farming towns and townships have been reduced to but little better than a howling wilderness,” the call says in conclusion: “These once prosperous farming communities were redeemed from the native wilderness by men who were no more temperate, industrious, or economical than the farmers of to-day, and the prices they received for their products were as low as, and in some instances lower than, to-day, but the fruits of their honest toil were not drawn from them as fast as acquired by national, State, county, and, in many instances, by municipal extravagance, as it is to-day.” The plundered peasantry of Spain, Italy, or Russia, army ridden as they are, could not have made a more just complaint.