Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/80

68 following manner: They authorized their tax officials, in cases where the citizen did not in their opinion make a satisfactory payment, or was suspected of false statements in respect to his income or property, to administer torture; and the historian Gibbon, in writing about this feature of Roman history, justifies it in a measure in the following language:

"The secret wealth of commerce, and the precarious profits of art and labor, are susceptible only of a discretionary valuation; and as the person of the trader supplies the want of a visible and permanent security, the payment of the imposition, which in the case of a land tax may be obtained by the seizure of property, can rarely be extorted by any other means than corporeal punishment."

That the Roman income-tax system was successful as respects revenue is probable, but it was also destructive of the state; for the testimony of history is that its people finally welcomed the inroad of the barbarians as a lesser evil than the continuance of their tax system.

As has been already intimated, there has been nothing corresponding to a general income tax, with personal inquisitorial features, in the fiscal system of France since the Revolution of 1789, In place of it, taxes are levied on the indicia or signs which each citizen presents of his possession of income or personal property; and the rents or rental value of the premises he occupies for residence or business, and the doors and windows of buildings, are regarded as such signs or indicia. This tax applies to the doors and windows into streets and courtyards and gardens of houses or workshops. In general, all openings giving light or air to houses and buildings for human habitations, shops, workshops, sheds, warehouses, etc., are taxable, whatever their shape, dimensions, or fastening may be. Thus, all openings to afford light to the stairs, to a habitable room opening on a covered yard, of a habitable house used for rural purposes, or the door of a garden leading to a dwelling, all are taxable. The openings to new buildings become taxable as soon as they are habitable. If at the time of making the tax roll some rooms in a new house are not yet habitable, the openings of such rooms are for the time exempt. If the entire front of a room or atelier consists of windows, the number of windows to be taxed is determined by their solid divisions of either iron, wood, or stone. Exempt are the doors and windows to light or air of barns, sheepfolds, stables, cellars, etc., not intended for human dwelling. Further exempt are doors or gates not locked; also interior doors of communication from one yard to another. Doors as well as windows of manufacturing establishments are not taxable except to those in the dwelling part.

Again, what is called a mobiliary tax of France is governed by