Taxes on vocations, on professions, on trade, on commerce, on profits, on interest, on wages and salaries, etc., etc., follow in quick succession, until finally the theories and practice of taxation actually conform to the facts of industrial life. One by one these various sources of wealth drop off from the antiquated general property tax only to receive a new life in these fresh forms. The feeling of equity in the public consciousness can not be put down. What escapes under one form it attempts to reach under another. The theories of taxation cannot long lag

behind the facts of industrial life.

III. History of the Property Tax1

In antiquity, direct taxation was treated not as a regular, but as an extraordinary source of revenue. The Athenian direct tax (elo popa) as levied in the the time of Solon (B. C. 596) was nominally a classified property tax, but in reality a land tax.2 With the increase of wealth an attempt was soon made to reach personalty; but the success is entirely conjectural. We simply know that under Nausinicus (B.c. 380) the bases of taxation were not only land and houses, but also slaves, cattle, furniture and money. But it is more than probable that the tax had by this time become a progressive income tax. At all events there is no proof at all that the tax on intangible personal property as such was at all successful.

In Rome the direct tax (tributum civium), which was not so much a tax as a compulsory loan to be repaid out of the proceeds of conquest, was levied only to meet extraordinary expenses for which the proceeds of domains (the vectigalia) did not suffice. As Rome was at first an agricultural community, the real quiritarian property, alone recognized by law, consisted

1 The only attempt thus far made to discuss this subject is that of Parieu, Histoire des impôts généraux sur la propriété et le revenu (1856). But this is inexact, inadequate, confused and antiquated.

2 Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iv, chapter 5.

This explanation of Rodbertus, in Hildebrand's Jahrbücher, VIII, 453 et seq., is far preferable to the very involved interpretation of Boeckh (p. 669 of the American edition).

of the repub

solely of land and the capital affixed to land, like houses, slaves and cattle. These were the res mancipi. But the property tax was assessed only on the land, on the assumption that every acre of land would require a definite quantity of this productive capital. The early Roman property tax therefore was in effect a tax on realty, analogous to the early elo popá. With the development of trade and industry in the later days lic, the character of property underwent a change. The amount of personalty increased. If the tributum was to remain a general property tax it would be necessary to assess also these new forms of property. And in truth the attempt was now made. Not only farming implements, but ships, carriages, money, garments, ornaments, etc., were listed. But it must be remembered that the only personalty assessed still consisted of visible, tangible objects, although the censors had practically unlimited power to take up any property into the tax-list (census). There is absolutely no evidence to prove that trading capital proper was ever taxed.5 And it is useless to speculate what might have been the result during the last period of the republic; for further progress in this direction was checked by the fact that, with one isolated exception, the republic levied no direct property tax at all on the Roman citizens after 167 B.C. Whether the tributum civium was again levied during the empire is a moot question. The weightier arguments seem to be on the side of those who maintain that it was never again made use of in its old form."

1 Mancipi res sunt praedia in Italico solo, tam rustica, qualis est fundus, quam urbana, qualis domus; item jura praediorum rusticorum, velut via, iter, actus, aquaeductus; item servi et quadrupedes, quae dorso collove domantur, velut boves, muli, equi, asini. Ceterae res nec mancipi sunt. Ulpian 19, 1. Cf. Gaius I, 120; II, 15-17. 2 Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung (2nd ed.), II, 161.

8 Except that it was not a graduated tax, and was levied on the value not the produce.

4 Matthias, Römische Grundsteuer und Vectigalrecht (1882), p. 6. The leading ideas of Matthias are translated in Humbert, Essai sur les finances chez les Romains, II, 328 et seq.

5 The only one who maintains the contrary is Walter, Geschichte des römischen Rechts (3d ed.), I, 271. But the passage of Livy to which he refers (VI, 27) does not bear out his assertion. Walter stands quite alone.

6 Rodbertus, Hildebrand's Jahrbücher, IV, 408-427, and Hegewisch, Römische

45 In the provinces the property tax was nothing but a land tax; either a tax on the value (tributum soli), or a tithe (decuma), or a ground rent (vectigal certum or stipendium). In addition to the land tax proper we find the poll tax (tributum capitis). In some of the older provinces, where the remains of an enterprising commercial life still existed, this tax probably included the customary imposts, whether a tax on classes or professions or a nominal general property tax.1

The Roman property tax was therefore virtually a tax on land and the little productive capital affixed to land. Personalty, so far as it was assessed at all, consisted of the meagre tangible objects owned by an agricultural people. The Romans had a general property tax because, as in Greece, there was only one kind of property-the collective property owned by a slave-holding population.

Under the empire industrial society began to differentiate. Caligula (A.D. 37-41) took advantage of this to levy taxes on special classes, above all on carriers, prostitutes and pimps.2 Trading capital, everywhere the first element to separate itself from the collective mass of property, was reached for the first time by Vespasian (69–79) in the curious tax on the private owners of city urinals and closets. Finally, shortly before Caracalla (211-217) we find a general tax on commercial capital, known henceforth as aurum negotiatorium. But what a

Finanzen, p. 1346, maintain its existence. But Savigny, Vermischte Schriften, II, 151, 185; Huschke, Ueber den Census zur Zeit Christi, pp. 70, 190; Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, II, 387; and Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, II, 171, take the opposite view. Dureau de la Malle, in his Economie politique des Romains, does not touch this point. The decisive quotation is that from Tacitus, Annales, 13, 51, of which Rodbertus' interpretation is strained. The best argument - which has not hitherto been advanced -seems to me to be this: that if the tributum civile had continued, it would not have been necessary for Diocletian to introduce into Italy the tributum provinciale.

1 Rodbertus, IV, 364, puts it too strongly when he says that it was only a poll tax. See Marquardt, II, 195.

2 Suetonius, Caligula, 40: "Ex gerulorum diurnis quaestibus pars octava, ex capturis prostitutarum quantum quaeque uno concubitu mereret." Cf. Dio Cassius, LIX, 28.

3 Known as foricarii. Suetonius, Vespasian, 16, 23. Cf. for other authorities Walter, Rechtsgeschichte, I, 498.

singular commentary it is on the progress of civilization that the first tax on circulating capital should be on a rather filthy occupation, and the first tax on industry one on prostitutes.1 Caracalla, we are told, conferred the privilege of Roman citizenship upon all the inhabitants of the empire in order to extend to them the now numerous direct taxes, especially the succession and manumission tax.2 The provincial land tax continued. But it went through the same evolution as formerly the civic direct tax. It became a general property tax. The industrial development, however, had outrun the fiscal theories. It became more and more difficult to reach personalty. More and more barbarous methods were introduced; until finally, as Lactantius tells us in stirring language, torture was applied to the recalcitrant owner. Under Diocletian (284-305) the provincial land tax (known henceforth as jugatio or capitatio terrena) was introduced into Italy. But at the time of the Theodosian code and the completion of the late fiscal system, we find, not the general property tax, but a vast variety of taxes, indirect and direct. Chief among the latter were those on the profits of trades, professions and artisans, now consolidated into corporations through the petrifaction of industrial relations. But the attempt to tax personal property by means of a general property tax was abandoned because the original mass of property had disintegrated. The primitive system was

1 Hildebrand's Jahrbücher, V. 315.

2 At least this is the uncharitable construction put on the act by Dio Cassius.

3 The municipal decurions, for example, were made personally liable for the taxes levied on their municipalities. Service as decurion became compulsory and hereditary. Fugitive decurions were brought back, like fugitive serfs or military deserters.

4 De morte pers. 23: Fora omnia gregibus familiarium referta; unusquisque cum liberis, cum servis aderat; tormenta ac verbera personabant; filii adversus parentes suspendebantur; fidelissimi quique servi contra dominos vexabantur, uxores adversus maritos. Si omnia defecerunt, ipsi contra se torquebantur, et quum dolor vicerat, adscribebantur quae non habebantur.

5 The poll tax (capitatio plebeia or humana) levied on the serfs (coloni) was practically a property tax because it was paid by the landowner.

6 Known as chrysargyrum, vectigal artium, pensio auraria and aurum iustrale. Cf. Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières en France, I, 72–78.

7 Cf. Wm. Adams Brown, State Control of Industry in the Fourth Century, POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, II, I (September, 1887), pp. 494–513.

abolished and was replaced by methods more or less analogous to modern European practice.

During the middle ages the same development can be noticed. In the early period, after the disruption of the Roman empire, there were no taxes at all. The primitive Teutonic idea forced its way through in the feudal system. The contributions originally devoted to public purposes became the private possessions of feudal nobles and over-lords. The public tax became private property.1

In the early feudal system land was practically the only form of wealth, just as it was the basis of the political fabric. In England the feudal payments (scutages, carucages, and tallages) gradually became land taxes, just as the Saxon shipgeld and danegeld were land taxes. But from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward, the growth of industry and commerce in the towns led to an increase of personalty or movables. It became necessary to devise some new method of reaching the ability of the citizens. The only way out of the difficulty in England, as on the whole continent, was a combination of the taxes on lands and movables through the general property tax.

The medieval towns were the birthplace of modern taxation. Every inhabitant was compelled to bear his share of the local burdens, his proportion of the scot and the lot. The scot or tax was almost from the very outset the general property tax combined with the subordinate poll tax, exactly as in the earliest days of the New England colonies. The town, as such, generally paid its share of the national burdens in a lump sum, the firma burgi. But this lump sum was always distributed among the townsmen in proportion to the property of each.2 On the

1 Cf. for details Clamageran, Histoire de l'impôt en France, I, 115; and Vuitry, Etudes sur le régime financier de la France avant la révolution, I, 420.

2 Numerous examples may be found in Madox, Firma Burgi, 281 et seq. In one town, under Edward III, each man is "taxandus et assidendus juxta quantitatem bonorum et catallorum suorum ibidem." In another town the tax "debet assideri proportionaliter juxta quantitatem bonorum suorum," etc. For London, where each freeman paid the general property tax as partem de bonis suis or partem catallorum, see the examples in Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis, Liber Albus I, 592 et seq. For full details as to the method of assessment tempore Edward II, see Liber Custumarum, 193 et seq., 568 et seq.