EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 31 



quered, that the gallant Mexicans might . . . cease to destroy them : " 

 clearly showing that they were at first propitiatory presents. Further 

 we read that " in Meztitlan the tribute was not paid at fixed times . . . 

 but when the lord wanted it. . . . They did not think of heaping up 

 the tribute, but they asked what was wanted at the moment for the 

 temples, the festivals, or the lords." Of the tributes throughout the 

 country of Montezuma, consisting of " provisions, clothing, and a great 

 variety of miscellaneous articles," we are told that " some of these were 

 paid annually, others every six months, and others every eighty days." 

 And then of the gifts made at festivals by some " in tokens of their 

 submission," Toribio says : " In this way it seems manifest that the 

 chiefs, the merchants, and the landed proprietors, were not obliged 

 to pay taxes, but did so voluntarily." 



The transition from voluntary gifts to compulsory tribute is trace- 

 able in early European history. Among the sources of revenue of the 

 Merovingian kings, Waitz enumerates the free-will gifts of the people 

 on various occasions (especially marriage), besides the yearly presents 

 made originally at the March gatherings, but afterward at other periods 

 about the beginning of the year voluntary when they began, but in- 

 creasingly becoming a fixed tax. And then, speaking of these same 

 yearly presents of the people in the Carolingian period, the same writer 

 says they had long lost their voluntary character, and are even described 

 as a tax by Hinckmar. They included horses, gold, silver, and jewels, 

 and (from nunneries) garments, and requisitions for the royal palaces; 

 and he adds that these dues, or tributa, were all of a more or less pri- 

 vate character ; though compulsory, they had not yet become taxes in 

 the literal sense. There is evidence that the voluntary presents, made 

 by towns to potentates on their entry, similarly passed from the volun- 

 tary to the compulsory. According to Leber, the express orders of the 

 king were needed to make Paris give presents to the Duke of Anjou in 

 1584, as also on other occasions to embassadors and foreign monarchs. 



In proportion as money-values became more definite, and payments 

 in money became easier, commutation resulted : instance in the Caro- 

 lingian period, " the so-called inferencla a due originally paid in cattle, 

 now in money ; " instance in our own history, the giving of money in- 

 stead of goods by towns to a king and his suite making a progress 

 through them. The evidence may fitly be closed with the following 

 passage from Stubbs : 



" The ordinary revenue of the English king had been derived solely from the 

 royal estates and the produce of what had been the Folkland, with such com- 

 muted payments of feormfultum, or provision in kind, as represented either the 

 reserved rents fron ancient possessions of the crown, or the quasi-voluntary trib- 

 ute paid by the nation to its chosen head." 



In which passage are simultaneously implied the passage from volun- 

 tary gifts to involuntary tribute and the commutation of tribute into 

 taxes. 



