No. 19. 1844. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Michigan: The petition of the undersigned citizens of the township of Hamtramck, in the county of Wayne, and state of Michigan, respectfully represents : That your petitioners have, for several years, endured with fortitude, but not without sensibility, an amount of taxation unreasonable, oppressive, and, it is believed, unexampled in any other state of this union. Indeed, it is probable that the subjects of few of the monarchies of Europe have had imposed upon them a ratio of direct taxes so onerous as that of which your petitioners complain. The state tax is light. It is but twenty cents on the hundred dollars of the valuation assessed on property. Your petitioners pay it with pleasure. And whenever the legislature shall deem it proper to increase the state tax with a view to the punctual payment of the interest upon her public debt, the ultimate redemption of the principal, and the observance of her plighted faith to her just creditors, your petitioners trust that they, and their fellow citizens of the township, will manifest no aversion to the contribution of their fair and liberal proportion of funds to the common treasury for the accomplishment of these sacred purposes. But the more local taxes, added to the present very moderate state tax, render the aggregate of taxation exacted from your petitioners enormously burdensome. Selecting one neighborhood in the township, the valuation of real and personal property is above that which it would command in cash. This, however, is the fault, not so much of the law, as of its execution. But high as the valuation is, the taxes imposed for township, school, road, county and state purposes, amount to nearly two dollars on every hundred dollars. For example, a French fellow citizen, with a property valued a little above three thousand dollars, paid taxes for 1843, in cash, to the amount of forty-one dollars and five cents, and had previously, for the same year, paid about twenty days' work on the public roads. This inordinate extravagance of taxation is the fault of the law, in not restraining the imposition of taxes within limits which the local fiscal officers shall in no case transcend. In a population of less than two thousand souls, men, women and children, in the township in which your petitioners reside, the aggregate of taxation is more than two thousand dollars in money, and about two thousand days' labor, or its equivalent in money at five shillings per day, on the public highways. What becomes of the money, your petitioners can form no precise judgment. They are aware that the administration of criminal justice, the repair of roads, and the diffusion of education in very imperfect elementary schools, require the payment of some taxes, but by no means to the amount imposed upon them. Your petitioners can truly affirm, that neither they, nor the township, neither the counties nor anybody else, derive advantages, in personal or public benefit, corresponding, in any degree, with the grinding exactions imposed upon them in the form of taxes. When the indirect taxation levied upon the people by the general government, amounting, in a population of eighteen millions of souls, to twenty-seven millions of dollars, about the average and actual sum disbursed from the national treasury per annum, is added to the local taxes just described, the result is startling. The whole amounts to nearly three dollars and a half for every soul in the township to which your petitioners belong. In a family of ten persons, with an unproductive property, valued at fifteen hundred dollars, the aggregate taxation, federal and local, is equal to about thirty-five dollars, about one-fifth of the sum which that property, with the labor bestowed upon it, annually produces. If there be, next to the liberty which it secures, one virtue of a republican government peculiarly valuable, it is the economy which it ought invariably to practice in every branch of public administration, local and general: It is, that industry and labor should not be divested of any portion of their fruits, beyond the economical and indispensable public necessities of the country. Reform, especially in the reduction of county and township officers, and of the expenses incurred in local administrations, is loudly de manded by general public sentiment, and by the necessities of the community. But the present object of your petitioners is to pray your honorable bodies to pass, at this session, an act limiting the imposition of taxes for state, county, township, school and road purposes, and for the collection of the same, to one per cent. on the valuation of real and personal property. This is as much as the people can bear. JOHN NORVELL, No. 20. 1844. Report of the Select Committee on License Law. The committee to whom were referred the petitions containing one thousand names from Wayne and St. Joseph counties, for the repeal of the existing laws granting license for the sale of ardent spirits, and refer the subject to the people when assembled at their township meetings, having had the same under consideration, would respectfully submit the following report: That the committee are well aware that the great virtues, viz: industry, prudence, economy and morality, are based on temperance, and that political and religious liberty, rests on this foundation, and in the absence of temperance these great virtues would prove a dead letter. Was it not for the establishment of these great virtues, that our ancestors bled in the beginning of this great republic? The great Washington has told us with paternal affection, that morality is indispensable, and productive of valuable consequences to the people. However distant it may be from true piety, the community have a deep and abiding interest in its advancement. Indeed, a people that are really moral, will be found to obey the laws from moral principle, and like the fabled inhabitants of Latimer, be just, not so much from legal obligations, as from free volitions. But, although in this world, it is not expected to arrive at a state of moral perfection, yet no one is excusable if he neglects the means within his power, to keep virtue and morality alive. In pursuing the business of legislation and in every other part of the administration of government, care should be taken to check the progress of vice, and to promote on the part of the people at large, that moral conduct and feeling which are so highly honorable and beneficial to community. To this end the laws ought to be so framed as to furnish as few inducements to the breach of them as possible, while their penalties should be such as to counteract the motives which prompt their violation. Idle and useless laws are to be avoided, for such weaken the respect which will naturally exist orr |