Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1786

Pencil draft dictated to Spencer MacCallum for letter to Leonard E. Read which, however, never was sent.

Dear Leonard:

     Now I can’t remember what circumstance it was that prevented me from giving to your kindly letter of June 9, last year, the attention it deserved. I’ve just returned from Southern California, where I’ve been for most of the past year, making some valuable and interesting contacts there. Spencer and I are feeling a little sorry about this and wondering how to make amends for the omission.

     Speaking with perfect candor, I have for many years had and still have the utmost sympathy and admiration for your libertarian work — so far as it goes. But I do feel that with you there is no wide-open door for the discovery or discussion of any possible alternatives to our present system of taxation so far as some minimal degree of coercion is accepted as being sound.

     It seems to me that our ideal should be such understanding as will bring about not a mere quantitative but a qualitative transformation of government from an arbitrary and coercive organization to one of reciprocal services for actual value received. Without some such ideal, it seems we are bound to compromise or at least temporize with an essentially evil principle.

     (I’m afraid I ought not to write that letter, Spencer.)