Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/806

724 Le took the field with a body of retainers, armed and maintained in a large degree at their own expense. The necessity of taxes in the ordinary sense was, therefore, by these conditions entirely superseded; and if at any time there was a deficiency of revenue from the crown estates and fees, other sources of revenue were resorted to in preference to anything that could by any possibility be regarded as taxes.

Numerous old-time writers of authority—Montesquieu among the number—might be cited in support of what was then regarded as an eminently sound principle, that governments ought to be supported from revenues derived from the public domains, and that taxation should be resorted to as rarely as possible; because, as one of them expressed it, "one enters into civil society to protect one's property, and not to have it taken away from him." It is also interesting to note in this connection the tendency at the present time to go back to this old doctrine, and for states and municipalities to derive their revenues from other sources than taxation—as from the granting of franchises for railways, telegraphs, telephones, gas supply, lotteries, etc., on condition of participation in profits on gross receipts. Thus, the present net profit on the German state railways is understood to pay the interest on the public debt of Germany. Nearly all the Continental states of Europe derive a considerable portion of their needed revenues from the profits of their domains and forests—Prussia to the extent of about $11,000,000 per annum; France, $5,500,000; Hungary, $3,000,000, and the like. The city of Paris derives about twenty per cent of its revenue from participation in the operation of franchises and income from productive property. In Berlin eighteen per cent, of all the municipal expenses are reported as derived from the public gas supply. In Illinois the State expenses are mainly defrayed from the State's share of the annual profits of the Illinois Central Railroad; and in Louisiana also, the State formerly and recently has participated in the profits of an authorized State lottery. If the ideas of Mr. Henry George, of a single tax on land, should prevail, and if such a tax does not diffuse itself, then the entire land of the country would in the course of time become the property of the state exclusively; and the old principle that a state should be supported from its own landed resources and property would be reasserted and established.

The following were some of the sources of revenue, other than what were assumed to be taxes, that were resorted to in mediæval times to make good any deficiency of income which the crown, as representing the state, derived from its special properties and privileges; and a reference to which is important, by reason of the flood of light they shed upon the concurrent social condition of the masses, and the utter disregard of their rulers