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are alike valuable to the community in proportion to their relative magnitude; that, above all, manufactures are useful to the farmer, as creating on the spot a market for raw materials, and largely increasing local consumption of all the products of the soil, and therefore should be preeminently encouraged;* if they can be made to see that the relation between city and country is that of the belly to the members, and that their present attitude of oppression toward the city is slow poison to themselves-then why will they not be willing that the State should adopt the measure proposed?

Let us see how it would work:

is now assessed on both real and personal property, would find the relief on the one tax balance the increase on the other.

(2.) Rents would be advanced to cover the tax, or more. At the least, all leases would thereafter oblige the tenant to pay the specific amount of the tax in addition to the old rate of rent, and by the process of diffusion already explained the landlord would be recouped and the consumer pay the tax. Nevertheless, real estate would be unfavorably affected for a while. But by and by

(3.) All other taxes being removed, there being no longer any apprehension of interference of the tax-collector with business in any way or manner, capital would flow into the city, new enterprises would be inaugurated, population would increase, rents would go up, and real estate would recover from its temporary depression and soon reach much higher prices than before.

The Controller's estimate of the expenses of the State for the fiscal years 1881-83 is $6,560,246, or $3,280,123 per annum. To meet this a tax of 64 cents has been levied on the total assessment of all kinds of property, amounting to $666,202,674. If the personal property portion of this assessment were all "good," as in the nature of things it cannot be, then it is evident that a tax of 50 cents would pay all theures, were developed, the accumulation of wealth State expenses. The State Board of Equalization have, however, for this reason, as required by Sec. 3696 of the Political Code, levied a tax of 64 cents, or 14 cents more than would be needed if there were to be no delinquent list.

Now, the items of real estate and improvements amount to $460,694,217, out of the $666,202,674. A tax of 714 cents on this lesser sum would, therefore, pay the expenses of the State; that is, the additional tax of only 74 cents put on real estate and improvements would be all the difference resulting to the debit side of the proposed change, so far as State taxes are concerned.

In the city, the tax this year, on a total assessment of $253,606,345, is 1.57 per cent., or $3,981,620, for city purposes. If this were confined to real estate and improvements, the rate would be advanced to 2.41. Add State tax, and the owners of real estate and improvements would be taxed this year 3.124 per cent.

What, then, would be the results to the taxpayer?

(1.) The abolition of personal taxes, licenses, etc., would of course be in exact proportion to the increase of the tax on land and buildings in both city and country, so that in the aggregate the tax-payers would pay no more taxes than they now do. Furthermore, the aggregate of the tax would be reduced by the amount now wasted in the cost of assessing and collecting the revenue from so many sources. It would often be the case, too, that each tax-payer, who

* Vermont exempts wholly from taxation all manufactories for five years from their inception.

(4.) As new enterprises, especially manufact

would soon flow out into the country, where the demand for new and more remunerative products than wheat would gradually cause a change in the present destructive agricultural policy of our State. Small farms of irrigated land would produce $50 to $500 per acre from crops that can best be raised on a small scale, and for which there is now no demand, yet for whose production our soil and climate are particularly designed by nature. This paper is already too long to more than allude to what might be done with jute, hemp, ramie, sugar, cotton, tobacco, silk, madder, teasels, grapes, olives, and the whole list of fruits that can now be dried and preserved so as to become permanent articles of commerce. No taxes on money, on debts, mortgages, on business, stocks, shipping, banks, or corporations as such, capital would be attracted, and invested in a greater variety of channels than ever. Immigration would follow, especially to those regions heretofore monopolized by land speculators, whose burden of taxation would make them anxious to let go at a great reduction of former prices. I look forward with hope and confidence to the dawning of the manufacturing and industrial day, now apparently sure to succeed our long night of mere speculation. I hope to live long enough to see the State dotted over with manufactories, its lands generally irrigated, cut up into small holdings, and furnishing support to thousands of substantial resident yeomanry, where now there are but tens, the bulk of whom are employed only a few months in the year. How is all this to be accomplished when our vicious system of taxation strangles in the birth all ef

fort toward improvement? How can we thrive | who exhaust themselves in the effort to prove

under a cast-iron Constitution, molded in the heat of class antagonisms, intended to affect present public interests as they appeared to the inflamed eyes of men laboring under mere temporary excitement, and formulated in contempt alike of the universal experience of mankind in the past, and of the changes in our requirements that will of course develop themselves in the future?

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in their own persons that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" Much more might be said in anticipation of the objections which are sure to be made to any proposition to change the new Constitution by those whose pride of consistency would lead them to sink the State rather than acknowledge an error under any circumstances. It is hoped that this paper may prove the entering wedge of a discussion on the merits of this most important subject, and that such debate may be conducted with that freedom from passion and prejudice which is essential to the development of "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

C. T. HOPKINS.

I have said enough thus far to enlist the attention of thoughtful, earnest, and patriotic men, enough to stimulate study of this most complicated of all the questions of statecraft, and enough to excite the attacks of that unfortunately large class in every new community NOTE.-Since the above was put in type, the report of the State Board of Equalization has been issued. It is full of suggestive facts in accord with the tenor of the above article. It shows that the maladministration of the business of assessment, especially in the country, has reduced the whole thing almost to the level of a scandal! After showing (p. 29) that, deducting the assessments of franchises, solvent debts, and shares of capital stock from the total value of personal property, "the assessed value of the personal property this year is only $1,716,718 over the assessment of 1878, and is $6,749,996 less than that of 1877." It says, "We feel sure that many, millions of dollars' worth escape assessment. We believe that if it were possible to secure for once a full and correct assessment of the State, the assessment roll would aggregate $1,000,000,000." The report gives ample evidence of the utter incapacity, if not deliberate fraud, of a large portion of the county assessors--all at the expense of the city; e. g., the average valuation of 1,389,550 acres of land in Kern County at $1.48 per acre, and 900,454 acres (376,930 less than in 1879) in San Diego County at 99 cents! But San Francisco's farming lands, 6,862 acres, though mostly sand-dunes or rough hills, are quoted at $168. 32 per acre. The report deserves careful criticism by all classes of the community, and it is hoped the press will give it careful and discriminating attention.-C. T. H.

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A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN.

gan to be, and Whitman is thus far the first tribune of the people who has bravely dared to take his seat in the senate of letters with the literary patricians of the world. In this, again, it is hardly possible to overrate his influence. This it is which distinguishes him from all others, and makes it certain that he will be read for centuries during the transition of humanity from feudalism to democracy. The other features of his writings, though deeply original, are yet paralleled and surpassed in the works of Shakspere, Goethe, and Emerson. But these writers have not been the spokesmen of the masses. The masses have never had a great poet until Whitman, unless, perhaps, we except sweet Robbie Burns, whose exquisite lyrics should not be compared with Whitman's vast, tumultous hymns of the universe. Burns is great as a daisy or a rose is great; Whitman as the cloud, the lightning, the tempest. It is foolish to deny to Whitman this title of representative poet of democracy, as a recent critic of him has done in an article in THE CaliforNIAN. Thoreau said everything when he said, "He is democracy." We are told by the critic that he is no true poet of the people because (think of it!) he has actually read all the great master-pieces of literature, and talks about Osiris, Brahma, and Hercules, and many other

After making all allowances and concessions | thing: he is the first great poet of democracy. as to the bad taste and the coarse indecencies | One hundred years ago modern democracy beof much of Walt Whitman's earlier writing, it still remains true that he is the most remarkable literary phenomenon of the age. A great deal of worthless rubbish has clustered about the pure magnetic ore of his thought, but there is noble metal at the center. That it is no child's play to analyze and criticise his writings, opening up as they do the profoundest questions in poetry, politics, and religion, no one who has read his works will need to be told. It is puzzling to know where to take hold of him, or how. He cannot be classified. He must rather be understood and interpreted by sympathetic intuition. Whitman has been greatly under estimated and greatly over estimated. This happens because of his duality. He is mixed of iron and gold. He is like those statues in the shops of Athens of which Socrates speaks: outwardly they were ugly and uncouth sileni, but within were the images of the everlasting gods. Whitman sometimes seems the spokesman of the low-bred rabble, uttering only bluster, coarse fustian, and beastly indecencies of language, but on the very next page, perhaps, his strain rises high and sweet and clear, and you tremble with awe at the manifestation of superhuman power, recognizing for the moment in this rude poet of the new world the peer of Homer, of Æschylus, of Angelo. Swinburne puts the case very neatly in a single para-things of which "the people" are not supposed graph of a pamphlet entitled Under the Microscope. He says:

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to know anything. The mistake of the critic is in thinking that the people are so ignorant in this age of universal reading as not to understand allusions to the commonplaces of literature. The language, too, of Whitman, is that of the people—almost wholly Saxon. Take the song of the broad-ax, for example, in Chants Democratic, and the description of the European headsman in the same poem. Almost every word is Saxon, and every word, with one exception, is either monosyllabic or dissyllabic. It seems as if no one with eyes and a brain back of them could read Whitman's prose writings, the Democratic Vistas and Memoranda during the War, and not see that he is democracy incarnated.

The very grossness, the swagger, the bad grammar, and the billingsgate which so frequently deface his early writing, instantly stamp him as of the people, as belonging to the class

ordinarily spoken of as uncultured. He himself | boundless sympathy and tender love for all men. is avowedly very bitter against conventional "culture." It has been very justly said of him that he sometimes affects his rôle. There is too much of this, I admit. He is often too self-conscious.

But this too frequent self-consciousness does not by any means make all his work affectation, and his carriage always, or often, that of an attitudinizer or mere poser. This is only occasional.* No, he is really and truly representative of the people. As he himself says,

"I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms."

And in another place,

"I advance from the people in their own spirit." Before Whitman self-government seemed problematical. Its ablest defenders had their despondent hours, and often in the bottom of their hearts were skeptical of the outcome. Those most enthusiastic for it were the ignorant, who saw not its terrible dangers, and learned theorizers, writers upon political sci

ence.

But here in America arises a man who, by the native grandeur of his soul and his vast prophetic insight and vorstellungskraft, discerns the magnificent promise of democracy, is filled with glowing faith in its possibilities, and loves it with the deep and yearning love of a mother for her child. He pours forth his burning thoughts in words—he writes the great epic of democracy, "the strong and haughty psalm of the Republic;" he calls it Leaves of Grass. The very title is democratic-suggests equal ity. His enthusiasm is catching, it is irresistible. Your skepticism gradually disappears as you read, and with deep delight you find yourself possessed of the national pride and self-respect which an unquestioning patriotism gives. Your debt of gratitude is very great. You love the man who has given you a country. You reverence the great heart that beats with such

* I must again quote from Swinburne's Under the Microscope (p. 47): "What comes forth out of the abundance of his [Whitman's ] heart rises at once from that high heart to the lips on which its thoughts take fire, and the music which rolls from them rings true as fine gold and perfect. What comes forth by the dictation of doctrinal theory serves only to twist aside his hand and make the written words run foolishly awry. What he says is well said when he speaks as of himself, and because he cannot choose but speak, whether he speak of a small bird's loss or of a great man's death, of a nation rising for battle or a child going forth in the morning. What he says is not well said when he speaks not as though he must, but as though he ought-a s though it behooved one who would be the poet of American democracy to do this thing or to do that thing if the duties f that office were to be properly fulfilled, the tenets of that e ligion worthily delivered.”

You feel safe in the shelter of such mighty faith. Henceforth you are strong, self-reliant. The influence of your new faith is felt in every act and thought of your life. You are a new man

or a new woman.

Whitman's idea of a republic is superb beyond comparison. Plato's dream is but a dream, but Whitman's ideal sketch is based on reality, on experiment. It is but a prophetic forecasting of the certain future, a filling in of the outlines already thrown upon the screen of the future by actually realized events. Leaves of Grass is destined to be a text-book for the scores of great democracies into which the Indo-European family is fast organizing itself in various parts of the globe; for it is the only book in the world which states in the plainest speech, and in a picturesque, concrete form (and therefore a popular form), the laws and principles, the ways and means, by which alone self-government can be successful. The principles laid fundamental laws of nature. They will be as down are as broad and true and unerring as the true thousands of years hence as they are today. In his republic Whitman will have great women, able-bodied women, and equality of the sexes. There shall be a new friendship-the love of man for man, comradeship, a manly affection purer than the love of the sexes, making invincible the nation, revolutionizing society. There are to be great poets, great musicians, great orators, vast halls of industry, completest lief, without which all will be failure. The pictfreedom, and, above all, profound religious beure of this vast continental republic of the new world is wrought out to its minutest detail in

the poet's mind. All on fire at the magnificence

of the vision, he bursts forth into that wild, ecDemocratic, which, for wild intensity of passion, static century-shout, the apostrophe in Chants seems to me unequaled in all literature:

"O mater! O fils! O brood continental! O flowers of the prairies!

O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!"

O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents! O vast preparations for these States! O years!"

"O haughtiest growth of time! O free and ecstatic!"

"O yon hastening light!

O so amazing and so broad, up there resplendent, darting and burning!

O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light, with pouring glories!"

"O my soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless! O centuries, centuries yet ahead!"

ending audacity of elected persons;

Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves;

There are passages in Nahum, Habakkuk, | Where the populace rise at once against the neverand Isaiah which are even finer than this in splendor of imagery, but none which excel it in intensity. Take for example the following passage from Isaiah (v, 26–30), and see how quietly it reads in comparison with Whitman, and yet notice that in exalted majesty of imagery and in stately magnificence of movement it excels him:

"He lifteth up a banner for the nations afar off, He whistleth for them from the ends of the earth, And behold they haste and come swiftly;

None among them is weary, and none stumbleth;
None slumbereth, and none sleepeth;

The girdle of their loins is not loosed,

Nor the latchet of their shoes broken;

Their arrows are sharp,

And all their bows bent;

The hoofs of their horses are like flint,
And their wheels like a whirlwind."

In regard to the communistic tendencies of Whitman, I confess that to my taste his political creed is too democratic-too all-leveling. In his ideal American republic one is distressed by the monotonous uniformity of men and institutions. All such attempts (conscious or unconscious) to level distinctions arise from failure to keep steadily in view the great evolutionary law of nature-the law of continual and universal differentiation. Whitman says, in his prose work, Democratic Vistas:

"Long enough have the People been listening to poems in which common Humanity, deferential, bends low, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to no such poems."

To this I reply, that when any people becomes so mad as not to acknowledge its natural leaders and superiors, then we shall have anarchy and not democracy. But we must not do Whitman injustice. No one believes more unwaveringly in great men than he; and if generally he seems to expect that all may be raised to one uniform level of attainment, he yet firmly insists upon reverence for the native superiority of mind; as, e. g., in the immortal words in which he describes the greatest city (Chants Democratic, ii, 6-15):

"What do you think enduresA teeming manufacturing State, Or hotels of granite and iron?

Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves. The show passes; all does well enough, of course. All does very well till one flash of defiance.

The greatest city is that which has the greatest man

or woman.

Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands, Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, Where the city of the best bodied mothers stands, There the greatest city stands."

"All waits or goes by default, till a strong being appears.

A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe.

When he or she appears, materials are overawed;
The dispute on the soul stops."

The great defect of Whitman's ideal of a democracy, as it is of his own nature, is that it is too coarse and rude-it does not provide for the polish and fine finishing which Nature shows through all her works. His ideal is herein seems absolutely perfect. But we still a magnificent skeleton of a democracy, and await the great poet who shall combine the strength of Whitman with the high-bred courtesy and elegance of Emerson or Goethe, and thus be himself a living incarnation of the Perfect Democracy. Whitman betrays the defect of his nature in a paragraph on his own style. He says:

"Let others finish specimens I never finish specimens. I shower them by exhaustless laws, as nature does, fresh and modern continually."

But nature does finish all her specimens most exquisitely. And so must the greatest poet. So did Shakspere; and so have the ten or eleven other great master-poets of the world.

A word about the Calamus of Whitman. The

billowing, up-welling love and yearning affection of Whitman's great heart-the love which led him to give those long years of self-sacrificing ministration to the wounded and dying in the hospitals of the war, this manly love, this love of comrades which he announces and sings in his Calamus-seems to the reader to be some

thing entirely novel. Such is the force of the powerful flavor of originality that he gives to every subject he touches. This type of manly affection he symbolizes by the calamus, or sweetflag. It is a beautiful and fit symbol. Like the grass, it too is a democratic symbol. It grows in fascicles of three, four, and five blades, which cling together for support. It is found in vast masses, standing shoulder to shoulder with its fellows, stout, pliant, and inexpugnable,

If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city confronting all weathers unmoved, rejoicing in

in the whole world."

"Where behavior is the finest of the fine arts; Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;

the sunshine, and unharmed by the storm. The delicate fragrance it gives forth when wounded, and the bitter-sweet flavor of its root, are also

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