COMPTROLLER OF THE TREASURY. XI

for previous years, exclusive of'interest, is $610,005.92. (See
Table No. 15.) These figures show the amount still out-
standing, in the hands of collectors, to be $1,049,534.65, be-
ing $100,871 80 less, I am happy to say, than it was at the
close of the fiscal year 1878.

It evidently then becomes my duty, under Art. 6, sec. 2,
of the Constitution, to which I have previously referred, to
digest and prepare a plan or plans for the improvement and
management of this part of the f evenue. In doing so, I in-
vite the hearty co-operation of the assembled wisdom of the
present General Assembly.

Ample and summary legal proceedings and remedies are
already provided, for the prompt enforcement and collection
of these taxes. The difficulty is not the want of more law -
there is too much already upoo these points, and some of it
so severe, that it is seldom or ever enforced. The trouble, I
take it, is that there are too many agents or instrumentali-
ties, to whom and through whom the State must look for
this branch of its revenue, la most of the counties the tax
collector is multiplied into as many as there are election dis-
tricts, and active partizans are selected to exact this unwill-
ing debt from neighbors and friends. In the city and in
those counties where there is but one collector, there is
almost invariably some especial immunity or privilege con-
ferred upon the office by local law. Promptness in the cor-
lection of money, especially where the debt is, as in the case
of a tax, often unwilling, depends upon the readiness and
determination manifested by the agent to resort to the remi-
dies provided to that end. It is the real purpose to resort to
legal remedies, rather than indulgence at first and threats
afterwards, put into practice here and there, that makes
people prompt in the payment of money.

The plan of making the collection of the State tax inde-
pendent of the collection of the municipal or county tax, and
of assigning large districts to each collector, and of subject-
ting the collector to removal at the will of the Comptroller,
and of imposing a fine to operate periodically upon the tardy
tax payer, being the opposite of the present plan, might