Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/486

444 mode of appropriating property by the governing power has prevailed in almost every country of the Old World of which we have any fiscal record, at some period of its history. At the same time all history teaches that the actual administration of such governments has been very generally, and perhaps as a rule unnecessarily, oppressive by reason of the manner of collecting or exacting the tribute or contributions from the people, or by the spoliations of the officials to whom the business was intrusted. Throughout the Eastern world the general practice under its native princes has been, and even still is, for the tribute or tax collectors to pay themselves by peculations, and to extort from the cultivator the utmost farthing that could be taken without compelling him to abandon his fields. Thus under the Sikh dynasty of India, which was founded by a petty chieftain on the ruins of the Mogul Empire at the close of the last century and continued until 1846, the custom was to take from the peasant the equivalent of six shillings out of every twelve shillings' value of his produce in the name of rent; but under the present British rule the government takes from the descendants of these same peasants only one or two shillings in the form of taxes. It is not necessary, however, to go to Eastern experiences for illustrations of how the burden of taxation can be made terribly oppressive by the method of taking, inasmuch as in 1598 (according to Sully ), out of one hundred and fifty millions extorted from the taxpayers of France in that year, only thirty millions found their way into the public treasury. It is stated as a not infrequent occurrence that prior to the great Revolution of 1789, a duty was levied twenty-seven times on a barrel of wine in the course of its transportation from the place where it was grown to that where it was sold; so that it was said to be cheaper to send wine from China to France than from one of the departments of France to Paris.

It is also to be noted that in ancient times war, both in Eastern countries and in Europe, was almost the normal state of mankind, and victorious nations supported and enriched themselves from the plunder and tribute of the vanquished. The land especially of subjected people became the property of the conquerors, and payments in the nature of rents rather than taxes were exacted from its occupants and cultivators.

—A curious perpetuation in many respects of these ancient methods is yet to be found in the present system of raising funds for defraying the expenses of the Government in China, and concerning which little has been definitely known until within a very recent period. With the exception of certain limited grants held by Manchu princes in consideration of