724 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he took the field with a body of retainers, armed and maintained 

 in a large degree at their own expense. The necessity of taxes in 

 the ordinary sense was, therefore, by these conditions entirely 

 superseded ; and if at any time there was a deficiency of revenue 

 from the crown estates and fees, other sources of revenue were 

 resorted to in preference to anything that could by any possibility 

 be regarded as taxes. 



Numerous old-time writers of authority Montesquieu among 

 the number might be cited in support of what was then regarded 

 as an eminently sound principle, that governments ought to be 

 supported from revenues derived from the public domains, and 

 that taxation should be resorted to as rarely as possible ; because, 

 as one of them expressed it, " one enters into civil society to pro- 

 tect one's property, and not to have it taken away from him." It 

 is also interesting to note in this connection the tendency at the 

 present time to go back to this old doctrine, and for states and 

 municipalities to derive their revenues from other sources than 

 taxation as from the granting of franchises for railways, tele- 

 graphs, telephones, gas supply, lotteries, etc., on condition of par- 

 ticipation in profits on gross receipts. Thus, the present net profit 

 on the German state railways is understood to pay the interest on 

 the public debt of Germany. Nearly all the Continental states of 

 Europe derive ^ considerable portion of their needed revenues 

 from the profits of their domains and forests Prussia to the ex- 

 tent of about $11,000,000 per annum ; France, $5,500,000 ; Hungary, 

 $3,000,000, and the like. The city of Paris derives about twenty 

 per cent of its revenue from participation in the operation of 

 franchises and income from productive property. In Berlin 

 eighteen per cent, of all the municipal expenses are reported as 

 derived from the public gas supply. In Illinois the State expenses 

 are mainly defrayed from the State's share of the annual profits of 

 the Illinois Central Railroad ; and in Louisiana also, the State for- 

 merly and recently has participated in the profits of an authorized 

 State lottery. If the ideas of Mr. Henry George, of a single tax 

 on land, should prevail, and if such a tax does not diffuse itself, 

 then the entire land of the country would in the course of time 

 become the property of the state exclusively ; and the old prin- 

 ciple that a state should be supported from its own landed re- 

 sources and property would be reasserted and established. 



The following were some of the sources of revenue, other than 

 what were assumed to be taxes, that were resorted to in medise- 

 val times to make good any deficiency of income which the 

 crown, as representing the state, derived from its special proper- 

 ties and privileges ; and a reference to which is important, by 

 reason of the flood of light they shed upon the concurrent social 

 condition of the masses, and the utter disregard of their rulers 



