44+ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mode of appropriating property by the governing power has pre- 

 vailed in almost every country of the Old World of which we have 

 any fiscal record, at some period of its history. At the same time 

 all history teaches that the actual administration of such govern- 

 ments has been very generally, and perhaps as a rule unneces- 

 sarily, oppressive by reason of the manner of collecting or exacting 

 the tribute or contributions from the people, or by the spoliations 

 of the officials to whom the business was intrusted. Throughout 

 the Eastern world the general practice under its native princes 

 has been, and even still is, for the tribute or tax collectors to pay 

 themselves by peculations, and to extort from the cultivator the 

 utmost farthing that could be taken without compelling him to 

 abandon his fields. Thus under the Sikh dynasty of India, which 

 was founded by a petty chieftain on the ruins of the Mogul Em- 

 pire at the close of the last century and continued until 1846, the 

 custom was to take from the peasant the equivalent of six shil- 

 lings out of every twelve shillings' value of his produce in the 

 name of rent ; but under the present British rule the government 

 takes from the descendants of these same peasants only one or 

 two shillings in the form of taxes. It is not necessary, however, 

 to go to Eastern experiences for illustrations of how the burden 

 of taxation can be made terribly oppressive by the method of 

 taking, inasmuch as in 1598 (according to Sully *), out of one 

 hundred and fifty millions extorted from the taxpayers of France 

 in that year, only thirty millions found their way into the public 

 treasury. It is stated as a not infrequent occurrence that prior to 

 the great Revolution of 1789, a duty was levied twenty-seven times 

 on a barrel of wine in the course of its transportation from the 

 place where it was grown to that where it was sold ; so that it 

 was said to be cheaper to send wine from China to France than 

 from one of the departments of France to Paris. 



It is also to be noted that in ancient times war, both in East- 

 ern countries and in Europe, was almost ^he normal state of man- 

 kind, and victorious nations supported and enriched themselves 

 from the plunder and tribute of the vanquished. The land espe- 

 cially of subjected people became the property of the conquerors, 

 and payments in the nature of rents rather than taxes were ex- 

 acted from its occupants and cultivators. 



Taxation in China. A curious perpetuation in many re- 

 spects of these ancient methods is yet to be found in the present 

 system of raising funds for defraying the expenses of the Govern- 

 ment in China, and concerning which little has been definitely 

 known until within a very recent period. With the exception of 

 certain limited grants held by Manchu princes in consideration of 



* Memoirs of Sully ; quoted by McCuUoch in Treatise on Taxation, p. 30. 



