358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



taxing property beyond their sovereignty or territorial jurisdiction, by 

 reason of the possession of its owner, do not follow to a logical conclu- 

 sion the principle they have adopted; for they do not hold that real 

 estate, as well as personal property, follows the domicile of its owner 

 for taxation But for this distinction no good reasons can be given, 

 although pretexts, claiming to be reasons, may. One claim, however, 

 is obviously as good as another. A robber who should draw romantic 

 distinctions between watches and purses would fail in business. If we 

 are to be robbers in practice, let us, at least, secure some grace by 

 honesty in our professions, and admit that what we thus take is not 

 a tax received as the just recompense of a benefit conferred, 

 but a compulsory levy, having its cause in our greed and its justifi- 

 cation in our power; and as these reasons are as good for a large 

 levy as a small one, and the whole of a man's estate is greater than 

 its part, why not take the whole? Still further, if it is right to tax a 

 man in Massachusetts, who has come for a lengthened stay from an- 

 other State or a foreign country, for the property he has left behind, 

 why not the man who has come for a week? If we are to do business 

 upon the principle that " might makes right," would it not be a 

 brilliant stroke to station ourselves at all the avenues of ingress to 

 a State, and cry " Stand and deliver! " to the passengers? From the 

 above citations and arguments, the conclusion would seem to be in- 

 evitable that when a State assesses property situated beyond its ter- 

 ritory and jurisdiction, and which its laws and processes are not 

 competent or able to either reach or protect, or assesses one of its 

 own citizens in respect to such property, the act has no claim to be 

 regarded as taxation, but is simply arbitrary taking] in no respect 

 different in principle from confiscation. 



It will also be interesting here to recall some of the antecedents 

 of this fiction of law, that personal property, irrespective of its 

 situs, follows the owner for the purpose of taxation. Its proto- 

 type was the ancient taille, or tax of servitude, imposed on persons 

 originally bondmen, or on all persons who held in farm, or lease, or 

 resided on lands of the suzerain, and from which proprietors or 

 suzerains of the land were exempt. And as no vassal could at will 

 divest himself of servitude or allegiance to his lord or suzerain, so 

 the obligation to pay taxes always remained upon him as a personal 

 servitude, whatever might be the location of his property. In other 

 words, the condition of the masses all over Europe during the 

 middle ages was not unlike the condition of the slaves in the United 

 States previous to emancipation. They (the slaves) had property in 

 their possession, and spoke of themselves as owners of property, but 

 in reality their property followed the condition of the servitude of 

 their persons, and both persons and property belonged equally to 



