210 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" danegeld," a charge on lands at so much per hide, or an area of 

 about one hundred acres; " scutage," a charge on tenants in lieu of 

 military service; " caracage" a charge on " plow lands "; " talliage " 

 (from the French tailler, to cut off), a charge on the tenants of royal 

 manors, and the like were designations of the different forms of 

 such assessments at different periods. As civilization advanced and 

 was accompanied, as at a more primitive period, with an increase in 

 the forms of personal property, a combination of taxes on land and 

 movables, or a general property tax system, developed and was 

 adopted by all the nations of western Europe with all the despotic 

 adjuncts which seemed necessary to make its enforcement success- 

 ful. The ultimate result of such a system was what might have been 

 anticipated. From a very early period it occasioned great popular 

 dissatisfaction. In Milan, Italy, as early as 1208, it was enforced 

 with such severity " that the assessment book was known as the 

 libra del dolore." In Florence it became so honeycombed with 

 abuses and the load of taxation fell with such crushing force on the 

 small owners of property that imminent popular revolution and dis- 

 order compelled its essential modification. As wealth increased, 

 evasions of the tax increased in a greater proportion in every com- 

 munity, leaving the burden of the system, as now in the United 

 States, on that class of the population — mainly the agricultural — 

 that are least able to bear it. Sir Robert Cecil stated in 1592 that 

 there were not five men in London assessed on their 2'oods at two him- 

 dred pounds (one thousand dollars); and Sir Walter Raleigh stated in 

 1601 that " the poor man " (in England) " pays as much as the rich." 

 In Florence in 1495 only fifty-two persons paid the tax on trade 

 capital, although the amount of such capital must have been im- 

 mense. Marshal Vauban, of France, who wrote on taxation about 

 1700, stated that the taille personalle was assessed only on the poor- 

 est classes. The result has been that as the difficulty of assessing 

 visible personal property and the impossibility of reaching invisible 

 and intangible personalty became apparent, the tax was gradually 

 modified, and finally abolished in all European countries, except 

 possibly Switzerland and Holland, where its nature has very little 

 of its original and typical character. One of the first acts of the 

 French National Assembly in 1789 was to abolish it entirely. A 

 provision for taxing personal property under a nominal land tax 

 continued to exist on the statute book until 1833, when, through 

 constant exemptions and systematic evasions, the annual revenue ac- 

 cruing from the same had run down to the sum of eight hundred and 

 twenty-three pounds (four thousand one hundred and fifteen dol- 

 lars). It is also interesting to note that the people of Europe 

 have been so long exempted from a general property tax that their 



