Abstract
I OBSERVE that both in your leading article and in the correspondence upon Mr. Wallace's letter, the soundness of his theory of taxation seems to be conceded, though you quarrel with his inference that Science ought not to receive Government aid. But will his theory hold water for a moment? The theory as I understand it is this: “No money raised by general taxation ought to be applied for any purpose which does not directly benefit everybody.” In other words, “It is not fair to take A's money and use it for the benefit of B.” Why not, if at the same time you take a proportionate amount of B's money and use it for the benefit of A? Suppose you tax people who don't want gratuitous education for themselves, and spend the money on primary schools. This is expenditure for the direct benefit of one class only; and indirect benefits, according to Mr. Wallace, are not to be taken into account. This, according to the theory, would be an unfair application of public money. But if at the same time you apply a proportionate amount of public money for the benefit of all those who reap no direct good from gratuitous schools, you exactly redress the injustice; and, so far as it goes, expenditure on Science is an expenditure of this character.
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TAXPAYER State Aid to Science. Nature 1, 335 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/001335a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001335a0
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