726 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



permanent, legitimate, and desirable source of revenue for the 

 state, continued to find favor in England as recently as the reign 

 of William and Mary, or in 1689 ; when, money being needed to 

 prosecute the war with France, it was seriously proposed to ex- 

 act, under the semblance of taxation, a hundred thousand pounds 

 from the Jews, and the proposition was at first favorably received 

 by the House of Commons. " The Jews, however, presented a 

 petition to Parliament in which they declared that they could not 

 afford to pay such a sum, and that they would rather leave the 

 kingdom than stay there and be ruined ; and after some discussion 

 the Jew tax was abandoned." For, as Macaulay expresses it, 

 " Enlightened politicians could not but perceive that special tax- 

 ation, laid on a small class which happens to be rich, unpopular, 

 and defenseless, is really confiscation, and must ultimately im- 

 poverish rather than enrich the state." * 



It is hardly necessary to point out that ill treatment of the 

 Jews has not been confined to English rulers and people. In 

 every country or state of Christendom they have been subjected 

 to arbitrary, unequal, and unjust exactions, deprived of ordinary 

 political privileges, and driven as homeless wanderers from cities 

 which their presence and their purses had enriched. And that 

 this race antagonism continues to be perpetuated to the present 

 day, is demonstrated by their recent and virtual expulsion from 

 Russia ; and even in the United States (where it might least be 

 expected) by a vulgar and brutal denunciation by a member of 

 the Federal Senate of the chief executive officials of the country, 

 for the assumed reason that they had entered into a fiscal cor- 

 respondence with an Englishman of Jewish descent, whom Eng- 

 land had admitted to a seat in her Parliament, and whose whole 

 life had been characterized by strict integrity, courtesy to all, 

 and large benevolence. 



Another extraordinary source of revenue to the crown in feu- 

 dal times, was the forfeiture of lands and estates for offenses ; and 

 of the immense sums thus obtained, some idea may be formed 

 from the circumstance, that up to the time of Elizabeth it has 

 been estimated that nearly all the land in England had at 

 some time fallen to the crown under the law of forfeitures. 

 Other devices for the raising of revenue which were very produc- 

 tive, were fines for the alienation (legal conveyance) of land, 

 which were exacted oftentimes to the extent of one third of their 

 yearly value, whenever the tenant found it necessary to make 

 over his land to another ; and from the sale of titles, which even 

 as late as 1G26, under Charles I, afforded considerable revenues. 

 The right of marriage was subject (at least in the case of nobles 



* Macaulay's History of England, vol iii, chap. xv. 



