TAX 



117 



TAX 



able revenue from an export duty upon that article. Upon 

 the same principle a duty upon machinery exported from 

 Great Britain would have been politic. British machinists 

 far excelled all others in skill and ingenuity, and foreign 

 manufacturers were willing to pay almost any price for 

 their machinery. Notwithstanding the prohibition, large 

 quantities have been smuggled abroad at an enormous 

 cost, but the difficulty and expense of evasion have been 

 so great that foreigners have latterly almost confined their 

 purchases, in this country, to models and drawings, and 

 nave made the machinery themselves, with the assistance 

 of British artizans, whom they have enticed abroad by ex- 

 travagant wages. (Reports of Committees of the House, of 

 Commons on Artizans and Machinery, in 1824 and 1825, 

 and On the Exportation of Machinery, 1841.) If, instead 

 of prohibiting the export, a duty of 7i or 10 per cent, ad 

 valorem had been imposed, foreign manufacturers would 

 have paid much less for the machinery purchased by them 

 in England than they could have had it made for abroad ; 

 there would have been a large export trade from this 

 country, and a considerable revenue. The partial relaxa- 

 tion of the prohibitory law in 1825, by granting licences 

 to export certain kinds of machinery, has shown the extent 

 to which the trade might have been carried under a more 

 liberal policy. The official value of machinery exported 

 under licence in 1840 was 593,064/., in addition to various 

 tools allowed by law to be exported, of which no account 

 was taken. (Sess. Paper, 1841, No. 201, p. 257.) 



On the same grounds a moderate duty on the export of 

 coal, being a product peculiarly abundant and of good 

 quality in this country, is a legitimate tax, which would be 

 paid by the foreigner, aud, if sufficiently moderate, would 

 not be injurious to the coal trade. 



But while moderate export duties upon articles of which 

 a country has almost the exclusive supply may be advis- 

 able, heavy duties will check the demand abroad in the 

 same manner as they have been shown to affect the con- 

 sumption of commodities at home. In the same manner 

 also they are injurious to trade and unprofitable to the 

 revenue. 



All duties whatever should be avoided upon the export 

 of produce or manufactures which may be also sent from 

 other countries to the same markets. They would discourage 

 trade and offer a premium to foreign competition. 



Although the temptation is great to shift taxes from one 

 country to another by means of export duties, this tempta- 

 tion is equally great in all countries ; and if their several 

 governments should be actuated by the desire to make 

 foreigners contribute to their revenue, their opportunities 

 for carrying out such a system would probably be equal, 

 and thus retaliations might be made upon each other, 

 which, after all, would neutralize their efforts to tax 

 foreigners, and leave them in the same position as if they 

 had been contented to tax none but their own subjects. 

 In this power of retaliation lies the antidote to the evil of 

 one state being forced to bear the burthens of another as 

 well as its own. Every state would naturally resist such 

 an imposition upon its subjects, and export duties can 

 t hero fore only be safely resorted to in such peculiar cases 

 as we have noticed, where foreigners are willing to pay an 

 increased price for commodities which they must have, 

 and which they cannot obtain so good or so cheap from 

 any other place. 



[CUSTOMS; EXCISE; LAND TAX; POST-OFFICE; STAMPS; 

 TAXES ; TITHES : WAREHOUSING SYSTEM.] 



TAX A'CE^E, a natural order of plants belonging to the 

 class Gymnospermse : This order possesses the following 

 essential characters. The flowers are monoecious or 

 dioecious, and are naked, or solitary surrounded by im- 

 bncnted bracts, or in spikes surrounded by bracts. The 

 male flowers have no calyx, and several stamens, mostly 

 united at the base, with the anthers either combined or 

 distinct. The female flowers are solitary and naked ; the 

 ovules are naked, with the foramen at the apex. The 

 ll are hard, and are sometimes surrounded by a succu- 

 coloured, cup-shaped pericarp : they possess fleshy 

 albumen, and a straight dicotyledonous embryo. The 

 plan' irder are trees or shrubs, having a woody 



ti-sue marked with circular disks, with evergreen and 



v narrow, rigid, entire, and veinless leaves. 

 This older is very characteristic of the class to which it 

 beloncs, in the absence of any regularly formed ovary, 

 and the consequent exposed or naked state of the ovule 



and seeds. In this respect it offers a lower state of oi-o-an- 

 ization than the Coniferae, or Pine tribe, the ovules of 

 which have a kind of protection in the hardened scale- 

 like bracts which constitute the cones of that order 

 The foliage also of Taxaeese differs from Coniferae, in their 

 possessing a greater tendency to expand and form veins 

 within their tissue. In the few species of Taxacea- that 

 possess veins, they are not straight and parallel, as in En- 

 dogens, but are forked and of a uniform thickness, similar 

 to those possessed by the higher forms of Cryptogamia, as 

 the Ferns. 



This order consists of plants that are but thinly dis- 

 tributed on the surface of the earth. They are mostly 

 natives of temperate parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and 

 America. The order yields trees which are valued for 

 their timber, and, like Coniferae, possess resinous proper- 

 ties. The branches of the Dacrydium taxifolnim are 

 used in New Zealand for making spruce-beer. [TAXUS 

 SAJ.ISBURIA.] 



TAXATIO ECCLESIA'STICA, signifies the assessment 

 and levy of taxes upon the property of the church and of 

 the clergy. The pope once claimed in all countries the first 

 year's whole profits and the tenth part of the whole annual 

 profits of every ecclesiastical benefice. These were called 

 ' First-Fruits and Tenths ' [FIRST-FRUITS ; TENTHS], and 

 were, for the most part, paid willingly by the clergy to their 

 ecclesiastical superior. The popes founded their claim upon 

 scriptural precepts and practice. They referred to Abra- 

 ham, a priest, paying tithes to Melchizedeck, the high 

 priest (Gen., xiv. 20 ; and Hebr., vii. 4) ; and to the 

 Levites, in the Mosaic law, paying the second tithes, that 

 is, the tithes of their tithes, to the priest : ' Thus shall you 

 offer an heave-offering unto the Lord of all your tithes 

 which ye receive of the children of Israel, and ye shall 

 give thereof the Lord's heave-offering to Aaron the priest.' 

 (Numb., xviii. 28 ; Fuller's Church History, p. 220.) 



The pope had his collectors in every diocese, who some- 

 times by bills of exchange, but generally in specie, yearly 

 returned the tenths and first-fruits of the clergy to Rome. 



But while the clergy were thus liable to taxation by 

 their ecclesiastical head, it was maintained by the 

 Roman Catholic church that their property enjoyed com- 

 plete immunity against all claims of temporal powers, being 

 set apart for the service of God, the support and dignity 

 of the Christian church, and for works of charity. Upon 

 this point frequent contests very naturally arose, and the 

 vast possessions of the church tempted the pope and tem- 

 poral princes by various modes to exact contributions 

 from the clergy. The means resorted to by these respective 

 powers to raise a revenue from the clergy, and the laws 

 and customs that prevailed upon the matter, may be con- 

 veniently stated by dividing the subject into 



1. Taxation of the church or clergy by the pope for 

 ecclesiastical purposes. 



2. By temporal princes for the service of the state. 



1. The pope was by no means satisfied with the regular 

 contributions of the clergy, but continually applied to 

 them for extraordinary funds for special purposes. In 

 1199 Pope Innocent III. issued a bull commanding the 

 prelates and clergy of the Christian church to pay the 

 40th part of all their revenues to defray the expenses of a 

 crusade. This is said to have been the first attempt to 

 impose a tax on the clergy of all nations by the authority 

 of the pope as head of the church. To enumerate only a 

 small portion of the instances in which the pope after- 

 wards exacted taxes from the clergy in the various coun- 

 tries of Europe would occupy much space ; but a few 

 examples from English history may be collected. 



In 1225 the pope entertained a project by which the re- 

 venues of two prebends in every cathedral, and the portion 

 of two monks in every monastery, in all the countries in 

 communion with the church of Rome, were to have been 

 granted to the pope for the better support of his dignity. 

 When this project was laid before the parliament of Eng- 

 land in 1226, they evaded a direct answer to the papal 

 legate, by alleging ' that this affair concerned all Christen- 

 dom ; and that they would conform to the resolutions of 

 other Christian countries.' (Wilkin's Concilia, vol. i., p. 

 620.) 



Two years afterwards the king of England, Henry III., 

 in order to induce the pope to interfere in a dispute con- 

 cerning the appointment of an archbishop to the see of 

 Canterbury, recently vacant by the death of Cardinal Lang- 



