PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 205 



and the substitution of other agencies (to be hereafter noticed) for 

 the collection of revenue. 



A fact of historical interest which ought not to be overlooked 

 in this connection is that whenever a system of infinitesimal taxation 

 (or a general property tax) has been projected, its authors have been 

 led, as it were, by instinct to the conclusion that its execution, with 

 any degree of effectiveness, must depend upon the employment of 

 extraordinary and arbitrary measures. Thus, the old Romans, who 

 first notably established the taxation of personal property at the 

 period of the decadence of the empire, and who were not troubled 

 with any restrictions of a constitutional character, or any very nice 

 notions about personal liberty or general morality, clearly perceived 

 this, and accordingly invested their tax officials with the power of 

 administering torture as a means of compelling information (answer- 

 ing questions) and enforcing payment; and that the tax officials 

 were not backward in using the power with which they were in- 

 vested is proved by a variety of evidence. 



Thus, Zosimus, who wrote in the fifth century a. d., states that 

 the period of the tax collection upon general industry " was an- 

 nounced by the tears and terrors of the citizens, who were often 

 compelled by the impending scourge" to meet their obligations; 

 and Gibbon, in treating of this feature of Roman history, in a meas- 

 ure justifies the proceeding in the following language : " The secret 

 wealth of commerce and the precarious profits of art and labor are 

 susceptible only of a discretionary valuation; and as the person of 

 the trader supplies the want of a visible and permanent security, the 

 payment of the imposition, which, in the case of a land tax, may be 

 obtained by the seizure of property, can rarely be extorted by any 

 other means than those of corporal punishment." 



And it is also especially worthy to note that in every instance 

 in which attempts have been made of late in the United States to 

 remedy the recognized imperfections and inequalities of existing 

 systems of local taxation, the persons intrusted with the duty, possi- 

 bly without knowing, and probably without caring, what were the 

 experience and custom of the old Romans, have been led by their 

 instincts and intuitions to go as far in the torture direction for the 

 obtaining of taxes on personal property as the conditions of our 

 modern civilization and the state of public opinion would allow. 



The most curious and confirmatory evidence of this is to be 

 found in a method of procedure adopted in the city of Boston, Massa- 

 chusetts — a method which has no parallel except in the records of 

 the middle ages and of the Inquisition, and constitutes in itself a 

 satire upon any claim to the enjoyment of a wholly free and enlight- 

 ened government. For failing to obtain satisfactory information 



