PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 209 



of obtaining revenue began to have the characteristics of a general 

 property tax; and as the coincidence of great value with small bulk 

 in some forms of tangible, visible property favored concealment, 

 some methods of obtaining revenue from property other than mere 

 inspection became necessary, and were obtained by the Romans 

 in the latter days of their empire by endowing their assessors and 

 taxgatherers (as before shown) with the power to administer torture 

 to unwilling taxpayers, a method that was followed and perpetuated 

 until within a very recent period by the rulers of most Asiatic coun- 

 tries; and in later days, when credits came into existence and exten- 

 sive use, and titles to property and evidences of indebtedness were 

 regarded as property, although intangible and invisible, a method 

 for discovering and assessing the same, as approximate to actual 

 torture as a higher civilization would sanction, was everywhere 

 adopted. 



And how such methods continue to exist and their practice be 

 regarded with favor in states and communities claiming to be in the 

 highest degree civilized and enlightened, finds proof and illustra- 

 tion in the following circumstance. In 1874 the Legislature of 

 Massachusetts created a commission of three persons to inquire into 

 the expediency of amending the laws of that State in respect to tax- 

 ation, and placed at its head the chairman of the Board of Assessors 

 of the city of Boston, a gentleman long identified with, if not the 

 originator of, the idea of making an arbitrary, irresponsible " doom- 

 ing chamber " an essential feature of tax administration. At the 

 outset this commission was evidently impressed with the necessity of 

 vindicating the " infinitesimal " or " general property " tax system, 

 then and at the present time especially favored and fully exempli- 

 fied in their State. And they set about it in the following manner: 

 with the Declaration of Independence before them, maintaining it to 

 be in the nature of a self-evident truth that " all men are endowed 

 by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," and " that among 

 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the commission 

 gravely announced that " the individual person y ' (in Massachu- 

 setts) " has no individual rights except that to his own righteous- 

 ness," thus laying a sure foundation in justification for a recurrence 

 in Massachusetts to the torture tax system of the ancient Romans if 

 its tax administrators should consider it expedient. 



After the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the subsequent 

 reconstruction, as it were, of government and society in Europe 

 during the early feudal period, and when land was practically the 

 only form of wealth, the payments exacted for the support of the 

 governing powers — kings, barons, knights, etc. — were essentially and 

 almost exclusively in the nature of land taxes; and the terms 



VOL. LII. — 16 



