the histories of the Elizabethan age. But this is not enough. He asks what is the best history of the Elizabethan age. Can any means be devised of answering his question? Merely to give him a list of works, good, bad, and indifferent, without a word to show their character, is to dishearten or misguide him. Unless he has considerable literary knowledge, more than most young men have, he is as likely to choose the bad or indifferent as the good. If, as is not improbable, he has never heard of Froude, and only heard of Hume, if, as is almost certain, Aikin, Burton, Camden, Naunton, Raumer, Wright, are entirely unknown to him, how can he make a good selection? It may be said that he can consult the librarians, or, if he has time, his instructors, and the various histories of literature; but the New Catalogue was designed to save him, as far as possible, from the necessity of consulting anybody. How can it do so in the present case?

*

in Comparative

so much could or a . But

The difficulties of the plan are here comparatively slight, the difficulties of the execution are almost insuperable. And first, of the plan. If it be merely desired to point out to the novice a few of the best authors, as, in Ecclesiastical History, Neander, or Milman, or Stanley, - in Geology, Lyell, Philology, Max Müller, or Professor Whitney, easily be done by prefixing to the titles a whoever wishes to see on which of the cards these marks are placed must examine each card, which is a work of time. To enable any person to turn immediately to the leading work in each division, the only part of the card which is seen when the drawer is first opened - the top- should be marked in some way so as to catch the eye at once. It might be dipped into some bright-colored ink; but unfortunately use, after a time, reduces the top of the cards to a uniform dingy hue, which recalls the edges of the leaves of circulating-library novels. A mark, less conspicuous at first, but more lasting, would be a notch, always made in the same part of the top, or the cutting off of one of the corners. This, indeed, might be too permanent, for in science, at least, the best book of to-day must give place before long to a better; and it would mark, at any rate, but a rude division. One could hardly be contented to separate books into sheep and goats. They are of every degree

of merit.

Some are good in one way, some in another; some for one man, some for another; some for one purpose, and not at all for another. To take a few of the histories of France: Michelet is brilliant, and in his later volumes erratic; Crowe is reliable, but certainly not brilliant; Alison has a reputation not lower than his deserts; Henri is diligent, comprehensive, interesting, and long; Duruy is admirable as an epitomist. What system of asterisks or notches or colors could tell all this? We must have notes; and this brings us back to the necessity of manipulating the cards, to see where and what the notes are. And here comes in also the difficulty of execution. Who shall write all these notes? What man is there who will undertake to say of a hundred thousand volumes, not only what subjects they treat, but how well they treat them? Who will gauge with equal facility and equal correctness the merits of a history of painting, a treatise on quaternions, a discussion of the nature of time and space or of the law of ejectments, an edition of a Greek play or Sanskrit poem, an opera, novel, or volume of sermons? In fact, it is plain that a perfect classed and descriptive catalogue is unattainable. But this is a matter in which completeness is not necessary. Whatever is well done will be profitable. And it would certainly seem that a university, where must be assembled many men of great special learning, who could give assistance in this work, and ought to be interested in having it properly done, possesses unusual advantages for the construction of such a catalogue. Without some such assistance, no corps of librarians that any American library possesses is equal to the task.*

The New Catalogue has elicited frequent and warm expressions of approbation from those who have had recourse to it, especially from the students, and its plan has been adopted by several other libraries. Its usefulness,† present and future,

*Some years ago the most important titles in some parts of the Index were marked with an asterisk; but the work was discontinued, because it was thought that a selection could be made to more advantage when the number of titles should be larger.

† One use has not been mentioned. It is very easy to discover the deficiencies of the library in any department, when all that it possesses in that department is brought together. A brief comparison of that part of the catalogue with a good special bibliography will show what are the most important works still wanting.

can hardly be overestimated. A large library uncatalogued is like a large city without a directory. The stranger strolls around it at random, and finds much to admire and enjoy; but if he has any purpose in his visit, it may be utterly frustrated: he will spend in his search time which he can ill spare, time in which he intended to transact his affairs or was to enjoy the company of his friends. Nay, it is much easier to become acquainted with the city than with the library: the signs catch the eye more quickly than the titles on the backs of the books; it is easier to remember and find again the place of a house than of a volume; and authors do not expose their wares in shop-windows, to show at once where one's wants can be supplied. The attendants are often good guides, better for certain parts of the library, and easier to consult, than any unintelligent catalogue can be: but few men can have its universal memory; and men die, while the catalogue lasts. "A library is not worth anything without a catalogue," says Carlyle; "it is a Polyphemus without any eye in his head." One who consults a library provided with a catalogue like Mr. Abbot's is a Briareus, with a hundred eyes and hands. Yet such is the ignorance which prevails in the world about library administration, that the catalogue is hardly ever thought of by those who found libraries. Thousands of dollars are provided to procure books, and not a cent to make them useful after they are received.

CHARLES A. CUTTER.

With this information, and with money, it becomes easy to make the library symmetrical. The New Catalogue thus not only reveals its treasures so that they can be used, but its wants so that they can be judiciously supplied.

ART. VI.-RAILROAD INFLATION.

as

USAGE and long-established authority have fixed upon the word "tax" a meaning which is too exclusively political, though some form of government could alone, and solely for its own purposes, impose a pecuniary burden under this name upon the wealth of a community. Such a definition is open to serious objections. It not only creates a mischievous confusion of ideas, but it actually deceives the community as to the xtent and unnecessary nature of many of the burdens under which it labors. The burden of taxation, as it is called, is crudely measured by the proportion which the public revenue bears to the numbers or supposed wealth of any community as expressed in the census. Such a measure is fallacious in the extreme. A tax is not only a contribution taken directly from the resources of any community for governmental or public uses, but, in its general significance, it is also any burden, natural or artificial, which, without altering the intrinsic value, the quality, or the quantity of raw material, adds to its cost before it reaches the consumer.

It is an elementary principle of political economy, that all wealth comes from the soil; neither human industry nor human ingenuity can produce any addition to the material possessions of mankind, except from the earth. The legerdemain of paper financiering operates largely upon the distribution of property, not uncommonly taking from one who is industrious, and giving to another who is cunning, a proportion of the honest results of labor. But however and with whatsoever degree of fraud it operates upon the distribution of wealth, it never directly creates it. Everything produced from the earth, moreover, is valuable only in so far as some one wants it and is willing to exchange labor or its products for it. Speaking somewhat loosely, all mankind may, then, be livided into the two great classes of consumers and producers, -to the first of which every human being, and to the last of which the vast majority of mankind, belongs. Between the producer of the raw material and the consumer there comes an intermediate class, the possessors of skilled labor, those who

by their labor lend an additional intrinsic value to the raw material. Such are all manufacturers. The sum total, therefore, of the wealth of any community and of the whole world consists of all that which it has extorted from the earth, enriched by any factitious value which may have been added to it. These two elements of cost-production and manufacture are necessary preliminaries to a fitness for consumption: everything beyond these which adds to the price of a commodity before it reaches the consumer is a tax levied upon consumption or production; just as much a tax, if the increase is charged for transportation and collected by an importer over his counter, as if it is charged for revenue and received by a collector at the custom-house. If tea, for instance, is raised and cured in China, and thence transported thousands of miles to London, and the consumer in London pays three times the price at which it was sold by him who cured it in China, that additional sum, however fairly earned by the services rendered, is nothing more nor less than a tax of two hundred per cent on the consumption of tea in London, which again reacts and affects the profit on its production in China. It is a necessary tax, perhaps, in view of existing means of transportation, but none the less is it a tax. The process of removal from one point to another from the point of production to that of consumption- has in this case added nothing to the wealth or possessions of the world. It has, indeed, distributed, but it has in no way increased or intrinsically qualified human possessions; for after it, as before, whether in Canton or in London, the world possessed the same number of pounds of tea of a given quality. So of flour, of cotton, and of every other product of the soil. Transportation cannot add to wealth; it is simply a distribution of wealth already in existence; and the cost of distribution constitutes a tax on consumption, levied indifferently on the producer, the manufacturer, and the consumer. This tax must necessarily fall upon all parties, though in unequal proportions very difficult to ascertain. The consumer has apparently to pay the entire amount. There is no doubt about his bearing a portion at least of the burden. But it does not rest on him alone, as few will deny in America, at least while unthreshed wheat is yet burned for fuel, and the trans