Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/179

Rh the ages, of the fact that in Greece and Rome the poll tax was exacted only of the people of subjugated provinces, and was therefore regarded as a mark of inferiority or slavery, this tax in modern times has not been in accord with public sentiment, and in most countries has now been abandoned. The last poll tax in England was enacted in 1689. Like all its predecessors, it was always unpopular and was regarded as unsuited to the people of England. It was repealed in 1698, and "henceforth this form of tax passed into the list of taxes tried and never again to be imposed in England. What minister," said Henry Fox in 1748, "would presume again to suggest the hated hearth money of the Stuarts, or the poll taxes of the reign of William III?" (Dowell, Taxation in England, vol. ii, p. 49.)

In the United States the poll tax formed, in 1895, a part of the tax system of twenty-six of the States and Territories, and was not recognized in twenty others, and in some of the latter its levy is prohibited by constitutional provisions. In New York a general law for the incorporation of villages confers upon its trustees the power to raise money by levying a poll tax.

From a theoretical or purely economic point of view the present popular opposition and adverse sentiment to the poll tax in the United States do not seem to be warranted by any very good reasons. The arguments made use of by those opposed to its continuance are not derived from old-time precedents, or warranted by the experience of foreign countries, inasmuch as its assessment in the States of the Federal Union has always been inconsiderable in amount, and has rarely involved in its collection any inquisitorial or arbitrary measures. The one most deserving of attention has been, that it practically imposed a property qualification upon the right of suffrage by making its payment a prerequisite to the act of voting, a money payment of even so small a sum as two dollars per annum in Massachusetts and one dollar in Connecticut being regarded in that light. But in answer to this it may be said that paupers are disfranchised not because they are vicious or illiterate, but, because of their inability to support themselves or aid in supporting the State, it is held that they ought not to be allowed a voice in the government of the State. To be consistent, therefore, the advocates of the abolition of the poll tax as administered in New England ought also to connect with it—i. e., its abolition—an extension of suffrage to the inmates of poorhouses who, otherwise qualified for its exercise, are now debarred from it exclusively by a lack of property qualification. On the other hand, a leading argument in favor of its continuance is that the majority of citizens who pay no direct State taxes upon property of any kind, but who are self-supporting and not paupers, ought not to be exempt from directly