PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 583 



and twenty-five years before the establishment of the empire 

 under Caesar, were enabled, through the great spoils of war ob- 

 tained from subjugated nations, to relieve themselves from taxa- 

 tion for the support of their government ; and, in so doing, it ap- 

 pears that they first threw off their direct taxes, and at a later 

 period those taxes that were indirect. But when under Caesar it 

 became necessary to reimpose taxes, they established them in a 

 reverse order that is, the indirect taxes were renewed first and 

 in preference to those which were direct ; thus recognizing and 

 affirming in practice the idea that characterizes the fiscal policy 

 of most modern governments namely, that it is expedient to con- 

 ceal as far as possible the burden of taxes from the people who 

 are to pay them. 



The gross amount of annual revenue which the empire of 

 Home collected in its best day is estimated by Gibbon to have 

 been about twenty million pounds sterling ($100,000,000) ; later 

 authorities place it at a much higher figure, or $200,000,000. In 

 default, however, of exact information as to the purchasing power 

 of money at the time, it is obvious that neither of these esti- 

 mates can give us any true idea of the real amount of the 

 Roman revenue; but, taking the probable price of wheat in 

 Rome at the close of the republic as an indication of the price of 

 other commodities, the purchasing power of Gibbon's twenty 

 million pounds sterling ($100,000,000) must have represented a 

 much greater sum, or at least $150,000,000. If the largest of these 

 estimates of the revenue of imperial Rome should seem inade- 

 quate for the support of a government that extended over the 

 greater part of the then known surface of the earth, that included 

 a population of at least 150,000,000, and maintained a military and 

 naval establishment of 450,000 men, it should be remembered 

 that, apart from the greater increased purchasing power of money 

 than now prevails, the expenditure by the state for the support 

 of its military forces was comparatively small (" the ratio of mili- 

 tary draft upon society before the inception of Rome's decadence 

 being but little more than one third as great as that of the seven 

 principal states of present Europe " *) ; that the present com- 

 plexity and magnitude of expenditure in the form of taxes did 

 not exist ; and that a Roman national debt, with its burden of con- 

 stantly accruing interest the one thing most grievous to modern 

 states was entirely unknown. 



The taxes, or rather exactions, on the people of the conquered 

 provinces of Rome were always more numerous, discriminating, 

 and onerous than those levied upon the population of the im- 

 perial city and its adjoining districts ; and from the time of the 



* Baker. The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans. D. Appleton & Co., 1894. 



