6i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



almost exclusively in meaning to the charges for permission to 

 pass oyer bridges, ferries, and roads (turnpikes) owned by the 

 parties imposing them. The courts have held that railroad fares 

 can not be regarded as tolls. 



A word in very common use in English history, especially 

 when reference is made to fiscal topics, is that of subsidy ; but 

 its former and present signification are very different. Under 

 the earlier English kings, when the inadequacy of the hereditary 

 or peculiar revenues of the crown to defray its expenditures com- 

 pelled the monarch to ask pecuniary aid of his subjects, the grants 

 that were made were known as "tenths" "fifteenths," or the like, 

 according as the exaction of such percentages of certain proper- 

 ties were authorized, and also as " subsidies " and " benevolences." 

 The peculiarity of all such grants was that they were always 

 special and extraordinary, and had no place in any regular sys- 

 tem of taxation. Thus, of the reign of Henry VIII it is recorded 

 that Parliament granted subsidies occasionally, but the king, hav- 

 ing found a readier way of obtaining money, did not need them 

 the readier way having been the confiscation of all the property 

 of the religious houses, which included more than half of all the 

 land of the kingdom ; and of Elizabeth, that during the forty- 

 five years of her reign Parliament granted twenty subsidies and 

 thirty-nine fifteenths, the balance of needed supplies being ob- 

 tained from crown lands as the duchy of Lancaster and other 

 hereditary revenues. Under the Commonwealth regular taxes on 

 lands and other forms of property were for the first time insti- 

 tuted in England, and these proved so productive that the old 

 methods of percentages, subsidies, and benevolences were discon- 

 tinued, and with their nomenclature disappeared from English 

 fiscal history. 



At the present time the term subsidy, in place of designating 

 as formerly a grant obtained by the Government from private 

 interests, has come to mean a grant obtained from the Govern- 

 ment, in aid of private enterprises which it is claimed should be 

 encouraged by the state in the interest of the general public, as, 

 for example, the fostering of shipbuilding and ship-using, and the 

 cultivation and manufacture of certain commodities. But this 

 modern use of the word " subsidy " can not, it is said, be referred 

 back to any earlier period than the year 1840. 



Of the many other terms and words used in connection with 

 the subject of taxation, there are very few that seem to require 

 special explanation, and the majority of these, although formerly 

 in extensive use, have now become obsolete and passed into his- 

 tory as, for example, gabelle, the term given in France to the tax 

 on salt ; corvee, a compulsory contribution of labor ; and taille, or 

 taillage, a tax on the supposed profits of agriculturists, and the 



