“It may seem to you, Rev. Dudley, that I cannot successfully refute or consistently deny this proposition; but it is the very point I do emphatically deny,” said Mr. Midith, in a soft tone of voice. “I hold that the rich pay scarcely any taxes. This tax question seems to be regarded by the mass of the people on earth in nearly the same light as the war question. The ‘praise and honor’ of victory is generally bestowed on the _general_, who is generally at a safe distance, while the private soldier, who does the _actual_ fighting, is scarcely ever thought of. Just so it is with the tax question. The one who really pays the taxes rarely ever receives credit for it. Let us exemplify this: “I suppose that you will agree with me that a robber, who forcibly took $10,000 yesterday, and is assessed on that $10,000 to-day, cannot be said to pay taxes; for by the act of robbing he has not produced anything, and it is plain that one who does not produce anything cannot really pay anything. We have seen that all material wealth is in the form of food, clothing, shelter, luxuries, and the instruments necessary for its production and distribution, and that this wealth must be produced either directly or indirectly by productive labor applied to land. Now your rich men, the same as the robber, are, as a rule, not engaged in actual productive labor, and can, therefore, not really pay taxes. As a rule, they have acquired their millions by appropriating, in a roundabout way, the wealth of the actual producer, and on this wealth, so appropriated from the products of the laborer, he, instead of the actual producer, pays a certain amount of this _appropriated_ (not earned) wealth into the treasury as taxes. “Let us make this principle plainer by additional examples. No doubt, you can plainly see that a burglar, who has just taken $100,000 from the vaults of the United States treasury, cannot be said to pay taxes, even if he gives part of this money back to the United States in the form of taxes. “When a saloon-keeper pays a $1,000 license for the privilege of selling liquor, he pays this license with the money he receives into his money drawer, for, as a saloon-keeper, he can pay it with no other money, because that is the only means by which he receives money, and the drinker who pays him the nickles, if the drinker earned them, pays the license; all that the saloon-keeper does in this matter is, that he takes the money out of his money-drawer and gives it to the license collector.