Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/654

582 of conducting commerce; imposed for the purpose of revenue only, and without the slightest reference to any contingent influences on trade or industry. In fact, the idea of promoting (protecting) industry through taxes on exchanges appears to have found no place in Roman or any other ancient economic history or experience.

In accordance with a practice on the part of the ancient Romans of deifying abstractions—as war, love, navigation, thievery, and the like—we find mention of the Genius of the Custom House, or of Indirect Taxes (genius portorii publici), a divinity that seems to have survived to our own times; inasmuch as many of the curious phenomena that have occurred in connection with modern efforts to prevent free exchanges through the agencies of customs taxation, seem only capable of explanation on the assumption that some occult power has been more potential in shaping economic events in this department of government than any proper exercise of man's reasoning faculties; and that it is the part of wisdom that large sacrifices should be made by the people in order to propitiate this deity.

Throughout the whole course of their history the principal taxes levied by the Romans appear to have been collected through the instrumentality of a class of officials known as "publicans," who paid the government for the privilege of so doing; and who, intrusted with extraordinary powers, were allowed, by way of compensation for their services, to collect and retain as much of additional revenue as they could force or extort from the taxpayers for their individual and private benefit. Such an administration of the publicans necessarily involved and required the employment of a large number of subcontractors and deputies, who, stationed at seaports, on public highways, at the gates of cities, and the market places, examined all goods exported, imported, or offered for sale, estimated their value, and collected the taxes to which they were legally liable, and as much more as they could extort with impunity, for the benefit of their masters or themselves—which last, in disorderly times and under the bad emperors, had a very wide latitude. This wretched system of "farming" or discounting the revenues of the state, which appears to have been a permanent feature of the government of Rome at all periods—under its kings, under the republic, and under the empire—has, moreover, a feature of general interest, as it clearly illustrates the exceeding limitation and narrowness of the general Roman policy in the sphere of civil administration.

Another fact pertinent to the general philosophy of taxation, which the historical study of Roman polity has developed, is also especially worthy of notice in this connection. As has been previously stated, the Romans, for a period of at least one hundred