PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 441 



On the other hand, in the case of the Romans, who had little 

 sensitiveness as to the manner in which public revenue or pri- 

 vate wealth was attained, the publicans who collected the cus- 

 toms were held in high honor, and were characterized as the 

 flower of the nobility (" flos equitum Romanor.um"). 



Another point of interest in connection with this immediate 

 subject, and one which has been generally overlooked, is that the 

 answer which Jesus gave to the Jews, who put to him the ques- 

 tion, "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar ?" namely, "Render 

 unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's " expresses a fundamental 

 principle in political economy, in that it enjoins payment on the 

 part of citizens or subjects of such tribute (taxes) as the govern- 

 ment (typified by Caesar) under which they live, may lawfully be 

 entitled to demand for its support ; and at the same time with- 

 holds sanction from, and so by implication denies, the right of a 

 government to take that to which it is not entitled (or which is 

 not Caesar's), which it does when it exacts tribute or taxes for 

 any other purpose than its legitimate support, or, what is the same 

 thing, for the benefit of individual or private interests. In other 

 words, the answer recognizes a broad line of distinction between 

 the rights of Caesar, or the government, and other rights in re- 

 spect to property ; and indicates that Caesar, or a government, can 

 find no justification, in virtue of power to compel the payment of 

 tribute or taxes, to appropriate property (of the people) under cir- 

 cumstances in which similar action on the part of a private citi- 

 zen would be considered robbery. 



The casual observer would hardly imagine that there was any 

 relation between anthropology (the science of man) and taxation ; 

 and yet writers on the laws of nations from an early period, and 

 economists of a later day,* have called attention to the circum- 

 stance that different races seem to possess different moral apti- 

 tudes for different forms of taxation. Thus it is claimed that in 

 countries inhabited by the pure Germanic race, or its leading 

 branches in Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, and the 

 United States the desire and ability for self-government, and 

 the disposition to place authority near to the individual or in his 

 town or locality, favors voluntary taxation and a great endurance 

 of burden in view of the attainment of a right result ; whereas 

 among the Latin races the tendency is to concentrate all author- 

 ity, and generally in a military form, in the state, and require 

 passive submission to the exercise of it on the part of the people. 

 Hence, general taxes on property and income, which require for 

 their successful application a certain degree of loyalty, of pa- 



* Macchiavelli and other Italian publicists in the seventeenth century, and M. de Pa- 

 rieu, a French economist, in 1855. 



