payable in money or commodities; and the only rule of practice, which in different districts could prefer any claim to uniformity, was the rule of inequality of assessment and harshness and cruelty in collection. On nearly every estate or seigniory, in addition to a great variety of direct taxes on persons and property, the various operations involved in production and consumption were as far as possible made the occasion for new and repeated assessments. The tenants, or vassals, were bound to grind their corn at the mill of the seignior only; to bake their bread exclusively in his ovens, and press their grapes and apples exclusively at his presses, and for every such industrial conversion a toll or tithe was collected. Movements of persons and property from one town or district to another, always involved taxation;* and every sale or transfer of property carried with it a fine, to the extent of oneeighth, and sometimes one-sixth of the entire equivalent received in consideration. Arthur Young, who travelled in France in 1787-89, says that even at that time, the very terms used to designate the taxes imposed on the peasantry of France, were in many instances untranslatable into English; and from a long list of such terms as he has recorded very few can be found defined in any ordinary French lexicon. In order, however, in some degree to satisfy curiosity as to the nature of these abominations, it may be mentioned, that one of the local taxes of Brittany, which remained in force down to 1789, and was known as the "silence des grenouilles" was a money payment, in lieu of an ancient feudal obligation In Massachusetts and other States, which adopt the fiction of law, that personal property cannot be separated from its owner, visible, tangible chattels, as cattle and merchandise, etc., are liable to be taxed successively in one and the same year; first in the States where they actually are and by whose laws they are protected, and again where the owner resides, if such residence be in a different State. But in France, under the ancient régime, they improved on this, by holding that a man (at least for a time), could not separate himself from a residence once adopted, but remained there for taxation, although he might have actually and permanently left it. Accordingly, therefore, they taxed all persons leaving their domiciles for a certain time in the seat of their former abode, namely, farmers and laborers for one year, and all other taxpayers for two years, provided the parish to which they removed was within the same district; but if otherwise, then farmers were to pay for two years, and all other persons for three years, so that a man under all circumstances in France, previous to 1789, would have had to pay double taxes, for from one to three years, as a penalty for changing his dwelling. incumbent on the residents of marshy districts, to keep the frogs still, by beating the waters, that the lady of the seignior, "when she lies in," might not be disturbed; while another exaction, even more outrageous, was the tax known as "cuissage," which was paid to the seignior on the occasion of every marriage on his estates, as a substitute for his ancient and formerly acknowledged right to the single possession before marriage of the person of every female, the daughter of any of his serfs or more dependent vassals. Out of such abuses the only possible issues were national death or radical reforms; and the latter came in the form of revolution. And to what extent the grievances of taxation were the causes of the Revolution is indicated by the circumstance, that one of the very first acts of the National Assembly of 1789 was to repeal and utterly wipe from the statute book all inquisitorial taxes of every nature and character, as well as all "prescription of oaths"; both being stigmatized in the report of the Committee as inconsistent with the maintenance of a free people. And so deep and lasting, moreover, has been the terrible lesson of past tax-experience to the French people, that from 1789 to the present time, — all through the financial embarrassments consequent on the wars of the first Napoleon, and more recently, on those resulting from the German invasion, there has not been so much as a popular thought or suggestion of adopting any system for raising internal or local revenues, which in any degree approximates to the existing American system, or to any system involving personal inquisition for its execution. - What local taxation was in England in the time of Edward II. has been already indicated. But how thoroughly the governing classes, at least in England, had in the time of William and Mary, come to understand the nature and demoralizing influences of inquisitorial taxation, and how prompt they were to abate popular grievances, which in France were allowed to accumulate, is shown by the act passed by the House of Commons in 1698 for the abolition of what was known as the "hearth money" (a tax of two shillings upon every hearth, first imposed in the reign of Charles II.), an extract from the preamble of which reads as follows: "Whereas, his Majesty 66 having been informed, that the revenue of hearth money was grievous to the people; and whereas the Commons do find that the said revenue cannot be regulated, but that it will occasion many difficulties and questions; and that it is, in itself, not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people; exposing every man's house to be entered into and searched at pleasure by persons unknown to him; therefore," etc., etc. And as a further illustration of how early English freemen came to perceive the just limitations of the taxing power, and to abhor the exercise of inquisitorial and arbitrary proceedings, it may be mentioned that one of the earliest laws of the Massachusetts Colony was that no man shall be rated for any estate or revenue he hath in England, or in any foreign parts, till it be transported thither," thereby plainly recognizing the principle laid down by the United States Supreme Court nearly two hundred and fifty years afterwards, that "property lying beyond the jurisdiction of the State is not a subject upon which her taxing power can be legitimately exercised"; and also, that in the first provincial codes of Pennsylvania, framed by Penn and his associates, special care was taken to confine taxation to land and a very few articles of personal property of a visible character; and to exempt from taxation merchandise and ships, and all representatives of property, as debts, bills and accounts, easy of concealment. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, down to 1842, reforms in taxation in Great Britain were very gradual, and in not a few instances the result of court decisions rather than of action by Parliament; the tax on windows, imposed in 1695, and which was advocated at the time on the ground that the assessor might determine the amount of the tax without passing the threshold of any house, remaining in force until 1851. Since 1842, however, reform in every department of British taxation has been rapid and intelligent; and although the British system as it exists to-day is the subject of much domestic complaint tems that can possibly be devised ever will be theless probably unequalled for simplicity, for efficiency in administration-all machinery of oaths, affidavits, listings and inquisitions (as in France) being wholly discarded, in as all sysit is never come tax excepted; and for the ease and economy with which it is made the instrumentality for collecting enormous annual revenues from comparatively few objects; and all this with an entire exemption of a very large portion of the population from any direct contact with the tax assessors and collectors.* What has already been effected, and what further may be expected in the sphere of tax reform in this country through the agency of the Federal Courts, i. e. in defining and limiting the powers of the States, and in making operative the 1st section of Article 4, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States against the exercise of arbitrary power, has been already briefly pointed out. But beyond the action of the courts, which are naturally slow, conservative and unwilling even to appear to invade the province of legislation, no radical improvement in our existing local tax systems as the result of legislative action can be expected until the general public, and more especially that part of it which makes and administers the laws, in some way obtain more definite and intelligent ideas than they now possess respecting the nature, object, and scope of taxation, and especially concerning the manner in which taxation once imposed diffuses itself and becomes a real and ultimate burden on objects far other than those which primarily sustain it. And one of the first and most important things which it is desirable that the public in this educating process should be brought to clearly comprehend (and which, absurd as the averment may seem), they certainly do not now comprehend, is, that nothing cannot be something; or, in other words, that property is a physical actuality, which has become valuable, "The study of the subject leads us to the conclusion, that the taxation of the United i gdom is the most scientific, the most economical in collection, and the least onerous to the people of any in Europe. The Englishman pays no poll tax, no land tax, no salt tax, no taxes on any of the necessaries of life, except it be on beer, on tea, and sugar." Sugar is now exempt. "Our taxes on successions and transfers of property are lower than those of France. Our customs are levied on five or six articles, our income tax chiefly affects those who possess realized property, our excise is a tax justly levied on the vices or indulgences of the people. We question, therefore, whether any country ever suffered less than England now does from the burden of taxation.” — Edinburgh Review, April, 1870, p. 201. or property, through the application of some form of labor; and therefore, that a title to property, or a representative of property can no more be property than a shadow can be a substance. And if this be true, then it would seem to follow of necessity that "the act of making debts, bonds, contracts, verbal or written, notes, book-accounts, mortgages, warehousereceipts, titles, certificates of stock, or any form of saleable and transferable rights, is not a creation or production of any new property, but simply an exchange by contract or operation of law of the rights or titles of parties in pre-existing property, and that any tax on any of these rights or titles is only another form of burdening the property which is the subject of the rights or titles."-Isaac Sherman. To which it may be further added, that if the tax is levied on any of these representatives or titles in any other State than the one where the property is located, it would clearly seem to be an extra-territorial tax, and therefore, by the decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, unconstitutional; and if levied on rights or titles within the same jurisdiction as the property itself, which is there also taxed, it is simply double taxation on one and the same thing, or an odious discrimination against property which may happen to be covered by such titles. On the other hand let us consider for a moment the converse of this proposition, namely, that titles are property, and as such ought not to be exempted from taxation. If this is so, then it would seem to follow that, by making titles, we can make property; and that when a man mortgages his farm for ten thousand dollars, the community have ten thousand dollars' worth of real estate, and ten thousand dollars' worth of personal property, when before the execution of the mortgage there was only the specified value of the real estate. Again, if the title is the property, then either the actuality is not property where it exists, or else we have two things occupying the same place at the same time. And here another illustration may be given of the fact already referred to; that without specific legislation, important reforms in the principles and methods of local taxation are being effected through the agency of the courts; for while this article was in the course of preparation, the very subject |