Redistribution of Wealth

In my research for my paper discussing the Sixteenth Amendment's Effects on the Fourteenth Amendment, I came upon a terrific quote about the history of taxation:

The history of taxation from the earliest ages has been the history of the attempts of one class to make other classes pay the expenses, or an undue share of the expenses, of the Government.
Aristocrats have always been trying to shift the taxes on to the people, and the people on to the aristocrats; the landed interests on to the commercial and the commercial on to the landed. There has not been a single instance of the coming together of a community to contrive a scheme of perfect fairness and equality for everybody.

Edwin L. Godkin, "The Income Tax Decision," Nation 60 (April 11, 1895): 272.