X REPORT OF THE

affords good reason to believe that the Reading Company
as the lessee of this canal and the Board of Public Works
will propose to your-Honorable Body a method of adjust-
ing these securities, which will be feasible and will result
in making them again productive.

The State tax levied upon the assessed value of prop-
-erty in 1883, was $873,917.58, of which there had been
paid into the treasury at the end of the fiscal year,
$505,217.92, leaving an unpaid balance on that year's levy
of $368,699.66. The receipts from collectors for previ-
ous years were $387,104.92, and the balance in their hands
unpaid was $486,644.34. The entire amount in the hands
of collectors, unaccounted for, is $855,344.00, and though
this sum is $295,062.45 less than it was in 1878, these con-
stant recurring large balances uncollected, prompt me to
repeat to this General Assembly the views I expressed to
the Legislature of 1880, in regard to the prompt collec-
tion of this important source of revenue :

"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 upon these points,

-and some of it so severe, that it is seldom or ever en-
forced. The trouble, I take it, is that there are too many
agents or instrumentalities, to whom and through whom
the State must look for this branch of its revenue. In
most of the counties the tax collector is multiplied into
&s many as there are election districts, and active parti-
.sans are selected to exact this-unwilling debt from neigh-
bors and friends. In the city and in those counties where
there is but one collector, there is almost invariably some

especial immunity or privilege conferred upon the office
by local law. Promptness in the collection of momey,

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 remedies pro-
vided to that end. It is the real purpose to resort to legal
remedies, rather than indulgence at first and threats af-
terwards, 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 in-
dependent of the collection of the municipal or county
tax, and of assigning large districts to each collector, and
of subjecting the collector to removal at the will of the