68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



following manner: They authorized their tax officials, in cases where 

 the citizen did not in their opinion make a satisfactory payment, or 

 was suspected of false statements in respect to his income or property, 

 to administer torture; and the historian Gibbon, in writing about 

 this feature of Roman history, justifies it in a measure in the follow- 

 ing 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 

 corporeal punishment." 



That the Roman income-tax system was successful as respects 

 revenue is probable, but it was also destructive of the state; for the 

 testimony of history is that its people finally welcomed the inroad 

 of the barbarians as a lesser evil than the continuance of their tax 

 system. 



As has been already intimated, there has been nothing corre- 

 sponding to a general income tax, with personal inquisitorial fea- 

 tures, in the fiscal system of France since the Revolution of 1789, 

 In place of it, taxes are levied on the indicia or signs which each 

 citizen presents of his possession of income or personal property; and 

 the rents or rental value of the premises he occupies for residence or 

 business, and the doors and windows of buildings, are regarded as 

 such signs or indicia. This tax applies to the doors and windows 

 into streets and courtyards and gardens of houses or workshops. In 

 general, all openings giving light or air to houses and buildings for 

 human habitations, shops, workshops, sheds, warehouses, etc., are 

 taxable, whatever their shape, dimensions, or fastening may be. 

 Thus, all openings to afford light to the stairs, to a habitable room 

 opening on a covered yard, of a habitable house used for rural pur- 

 poses, or the door of a garden leading to a dwelling, all are taxable. 

 The openings to new buildings become taxable as soon as they are 

 habitable. If at the time of making the tax roll some rooms in a 

 new house are not yet habitable, the openings of such rooms are for 

 the time exempt. If the entire front of a room or atelier consists of 

 windows, the number of windows to be taxed is determined by their 

 solid divisions of either iron, wood, or stone. Exempt are the doors 

 and windows to light or air of barns, sheepfolds, stables, cellars, etc., 

 not intended for human dwelling. Further exempt are doors or gates 

 not locked; also interior doors of communication from one yard to 

 another. Doors as well as windows of manufacturing establish- 

 ments are not taxable except to those in the dwelling part. 



Again, what is called a mohiliary tax of France is governed by 



