APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1896. 



PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 



By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L., 



COBKESPONDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETC. 



n. THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY. 



PART III. 



TAXATION IN THE Medieval Period. With the termina- 

 tion of the Roman Empire of the West, which is regarded as 

 having taken place a. d. 476, when Odoacer, chief of the Germanic 

 tribe Heruli, captured the city and assumed the title of King of 

 Italy, a new and great element was introduced into European life, 

 tlirough the intermingling of the northern barbarians with the 

 civilized. Christianized, and degraded Romans of the south. The 

 following period, for at least five hundred years, was character- 

 ized, to an extent never before surpassed in the world's history, 

 by bloodshed, license, licentiousness, turmoil, robbery, and woe. 

 Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Danes, and 

 Normans crowded upon and warred with each other. From such 

 a period, when neither the agriculturist nor the artificer could 

 control to any great extent the fruits of his labor, and when 

 the merchant " stole along the hedges, shrank from the eye of the 

 passer, and stepped into rivers cautiously, seeking a ford, lest the 

 man at the bridge should rob him," but little in the way of 

 economic or fiscal principle could be deduced. In short, a new 

 society, the foundation and precursor of what now exists, was in 

 the process of evolution ; but in order that evolution might com- 

 mence, it would seem to have been necessary that all the ele- 

 ments of the old should have been completely dissolved, in order 

 that its atoms might move freely a condition like that to which 

 the chemist is compelled to bring earthy mineral substances in 

 order to effect their purification and crystallization. 



TOL. XLTIII. 52 



