Commissions of inquiry on this whole subject of taxation are continually being appointed--we have had two in Massachusetts in the past ten years--and their recommendations nearly always prove unacceptable. The probable scientific answer, that you must only tax property and not money or the evidence of property, and that if direct taxation thereby becomes too burdensome we must reduce our rate of expenditure, is a conclusion our legislators are yet unwilling to accept. The taxation of corporations presents a different problem and we shall therefore leave it for special consideration with that subject. The matter of betterment taxes may be dismissed with a word, as it is hardly, in theory, taxation at all, but rather using municipal agencies to collect the cost, or part of the cost, of a local work or benefit. It is, of course, closely connected with the subject of eminent domain. That is to say, only a public use, or at least a general local benefit, can justify a betterment tax. There is still considerable legislation on this matter, confined generally to the objects of securing a jury trial, or at least a public hearing, on the amount of the assessment, defining the purposes for which it may be imposed, as, for instance, paving, sewers, water-works where public, and--perhaps the most contested case of all--that of parks or pleasure-grounds; and providing that the amount of betterment taxes imposed shall not exceed one-half the value of the improvement of the property, and shall never exceed the amount paid as damages when part of the owner's land is taken. By far the greatest mass of legislation relating to property is concerned with the police power and modern extensions thereof. It is also by far the most dangerous to property rights, and this for several reasons: firstly, it involves the destruction of property without any compensation whatever, not upon payment of damages, as in the ease of eminent domain; secondly, on account of the extraordinary extension by our modern legislation of this power to matters not hitherto deemed necessary for the safety, health, or even the well-being of the public, vague as the legal application of the last word is; thirdly, and perhaps most important, because the police power is usually exercised without any common-law guarantees, without process of law or jury trial, but by the arbitrary ruling of some board, or even single commissioner, and often, so far as the statute is concerned, without a jury or even an appeal from the commissioner's ruling to any court of law.