Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/808

726 permanent, legitimate, and desirable source of revenue for the state, continued to find favor in England as recently as the reign of William and Mary, or in 1689; when, money being needed to prosecute the war with France, it was seriously proposed to exact, under the semblance of taxation, a hundred thousand pounds from the Jews, and the proposition was at first favorably received by the House of Commons. "The Jews, however, presented a petition to Parliament in which they declared that they could not afford to pay such a sum, and that they would rather leave the kingdom than stay there and be ruined; and after some discussion the Jew tax was abandoned." For, as Macaulay expresses it, "Enlightened politicians could not but perceive that special taxation, laid on a small class which happens to be rich, unpopular, and defenseless, is really confiscation, and must ultimately impoverish rather than enrich the state."

It is hardly necessary to point out that ill treatment of the Jews has not been confined to English rulers and people. In every country or state of Christendom they have been subjected to arbitrary, unequal, and unjust exactions, deprived of ordinary political privileges, and driven as homeless wanderers from cities which their presence and their purses had enriched. And that this race antagonism continues to be perpetuated to the present day, is demonstrated by their recent and virtual expulsion from Russia; and even in the United States (where it might least be expected) by a vulgar and brutal denunciation by a member of the Federal Senate of the chief executive officials of the country, for the assumed reason that they had entered into a fiscal correspondence with an Englishman of Jewish descent, whom England had admitted to a seat in her Parliament, and whose whole life had been characterized by strict integrity, courtesy to all, and large benevolence.

Another extraordinary source of revenue to the crown in feudal times, was the forfeiture of lands and estates for offenses; and of the immense sums thus obtained, some idea may be formed from the circumstance, that up to the time of Elizabeth it has been estimated that nearly all the land in England had at some time fallen to the crown under the law of forfeitures. Other devices for the raising of revenue which were very productive, were fines for the alienation (legal conveyance) of land, which were exacted oftentimes to the extent of one third of their yearly value, whenever the tenant found it necessary to make over his land to another; and from the sale of titles, which even as late as 1626, under Charles I, afforded considerable revenues. The right of marriage was subject (at least in the case of nobles