734 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Finally, a feature of special importance in connection with the 

 history of English tax experiences, one often overlooked in his- 

 torical essays and discussions, but which ought to command the 

 attention of all interested in the origin of the structure and diver- 

 sities of governments, is the demonstration it affords of the close 

 connection between taxation and popular liberty. Take up the 

 history of any people, state, or nation that has fought its way, 

 like England, out of despotism into liberty, and what are the 

 transactions that most significantly mark and constitute its 

 progress ? The story is substantially the same in every case. 

 First, a government of might supported by arbitrary exactions 

 from persons and property tribute, taille, scutage, gabelle, corvee, 

 escheats, octroi, vingtieme, customs duties, subsidies, benevolences, 

 and the like levied at the will or caprice of an absolute and de- 

 spotic chief or monarch, and without any consultation with or 

 assent of the governed. Then, in some hour of royal adversity or 

 need, the monarch appeals for aid to the more powerful of his 

 subjects lords and nobles who, in turn, taking advantage of the 

 situation, vote or grant it, in consideration of the concession of 

 some " Magna Charta," limiting in a measure the sphere of ex- 

 actions on the part of the monarch, or at least securing to a few 

 of his privileged subordinates a voice in regulating and legalizing 

 the same. Later comes the struggle between the privileged few 

 and the unprivileged many, and sooner or later, by peaceful po- 

 litical progress, or by violence and revolution, the privileged class 

 ceases to be a separate potential element of the state, and thence 

 passes to the people the sole right to determine, through their 

 chosen representatives, what grants of supplies shall be made for 

 the support of the state, and how the burden of taxation which 

 they entail shall be distributed. And then, if further progress is 

 to be achieved, to the end that in exercising the great power 

 of appropriating private property for defraying the expenses 

 of government, no more be taken than is necessary; that none 

 shall be assessed unequally; that the greatest freedom may be 

 secured for production and distribution, and the greatest re- 

 strictions placed on monopolies, there must be, through study 

 and investigation, such an improvement and remodeling of all 

 existing systems of taxation as will completely eliminate from 

 them all practices that rest upon no better basis than old preju- 

 dices and narrow, selfish interests, and make them conformable 

 to principles and conditions which, when presented abstractly, 

 will command almost universal assent. 



THE discovery of a twilight band on Mars is announced by Mr. Percival 

 Lowell, on the authority of observations by Mr. Douglass and Prof. Pick- 

 ering. 



