Fees in the American Colonies. 
121 
many of the so-called fees, which had repeatedly been submitted to 
in England. But the colonists refused to concede that the stamp 
charges were payments for regulation. The result of this was 
the American Revolution, which terminated, as every one knows, 
in American Independence. 
H. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FEE SYSTEM IN THE 
COLONIES. 
The most striking features of the colonial financial system is 
that the greatest part more or less of the revenue was derived from 
fees, inasmuch as all offices were self-supporting. There was 
scarcely an official who did not charge and collect for his own use 
fees of one kind or another. The “ social contract ” theory of 
the state, which was commonly accepted for a time, really had 
some foundation in the actual colonial conditions. Service and 
counter-service was the theory on which the entire method of 
remunerating public officials was based. It worked very well 
for a time, that is, during the primitive period; but as soon as 
the population became dense, and the amount of business to be 
performed by public officials increased, opportunities for fraud 
set in, which lead to the substitution of the salary for the fee 
system. Another characteristic of the colonial period, which 
belongs to all truck economies, is the fact that fees were paid 
in kind, that is, in cattle, tobacco, 1 corn, powder, shot, and so 
on. Furthermore, the undifferentiated state of the public serv¬ 
ice made it possible for one person to hold several offices at the 
same time, and, by means of fees from each, to eke out enough 
to make a fair compensation. 
The early colonial fee-system contains the germ from which 
the modern fee-system developed. Conditions were such that 
but few license and inspection fees were necessary, and harbor 2 
and pilot fees were in their infancy; while court fees were well 
1 A law was passed in Virginia to allow those who did not raise tobacco 
to pay their fees in money. 
2 Fees of shipping officers in Mass, ports in 1663: For taking bond, 5s.; 
receiving and entering certificate, 2s. 6d.; for giving and recording certifi¬ 
cate, 2s. 6d. Colonial Laws , p. 223. 
