PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 585 



artificially low prices, among the poor and idle masses of the im- 

 perial city ; which practice, originally adopted under the repub- 

 lic, with a view of obviating popular discontent, and continued, 

 with additions of oil and meat under the empire, finally became 

 a cause of great anxiety to the emperors lest anything should 

 interfere with the movement of grain, which was mainly by sea 

 from Africa and Sicily. To insure regularity and efficient service, 

 the state at first farmed out the right to transport the crops to 

 certain wealthy individuals; and this inducement to enterprise 

 proving insufficient, the Emperor Claudius gave a bounty for each 

 successful trip of the grain fleet. The construction of ships was 

 also encouraged by subsidies, and in this way there grew up a 

 class of wealthy shipowners, whose profits and incentive to busi- 

 ness were obtained from the state, and who by organization into 

 an association (analogous to the modern trust) under the name of 

 "Naviculari" with branches in every city or town in the prov- 

 inces, and with wealthy and influential senators among its stock- 

 holders or patrons, attained to great prominence and influence in 

 the third and fourth centuries. 



Taxation, in at least one notable instance, was also employed 

 by the Romans as an instrumentality for the correction of a social 

 evil namely, a disinclination on the part of wealthy citizens, in 

 the latter days of the republic and throughout the whole period 

 of the empire, to contract marriages, with a view of avoiding the 

 cares and burdens of a family. To counteract this tendency, a 

 tax (" CBS uxorium ") was imposed on bachelors, with a limitation 

 (" lex Julia et Papia Poppcea ") on the transmission of property 

 by will or gift by the unmarried and the childless.* 



The statesmen and administrators of Rome seem never to have 

 given a thought to the desirability of encouraging industry, trade, 

 or commerce among their own people, much less among the people 

 they had subjugated. There was, throughout all their literature 

 and laws, the contempt which brigands and barbarians entertain 

 for honest industry, at least when that industry is not agricul- 



* In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was well-nigh universal legislation 

 of this kind, the most thoroughgoing specimens being a Spanish edict of 1623 and one of 

 Louis XIV in 1666, which not only granted exemption from taxation, but positive subsidies 

 in cash, as an inducement to early marriages. That the idea involved in such legislation 

 has also found favor at the present time is shown by the fact that Prof. Richet, a German 

 economist of repute, has recently proposed that in all systems of taxation the fathers of 

 large families be favored, and that corresponding burdens be laid on those who contuma- 

 ciously refrain from marrying ; ignoring the fact that old Rome adopted and carried out this 

 policy by measures much more drastic than the spirit of the present times would tolerate, 

 and that the result is generally believed to have been a failure. It is also worthy of note, 

 that at the present time, in the Canadian Province of Quebec, the fathers of the largest 

 families receive bounties of public lands ; the motive of which policy is unquestionably to 

 bring the French Canadian element into the control of the Dominion Government. 



