104 The theory and practice op taxation.

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 gae 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 until 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 mediaeval 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 of anything akin to justice in their administration of government. One of the most notable of these sources was the Jews, who dur­ing the middle ages had no rights of citizenship in Chris­tianized Europe, and were held, in respect to their persons, goods, wives and children, at the absolute disposal of the chief of the state, to be taxed and despoiled by him at his pleasure. This utilization of the Jews as sources of revenue was far more thoroughly and systematically carried out in England than in any other country. ^a They were, in fact, the private property of the king; living instruments of his revenue; carefully protected by his government, unless in cases where exceptional necessity on his part or obstinacy on theirs made it expedient to bear upon them with un-

PLUNDER OP THE JEWS. 106

unusual weight; * not serfs bound to the soil, but slaves of the highest value, to whom to allow free action in the acquisition of wealth was the needful condition of reap­ing the fruit of their labour. There is a writ of Henry III in which, in payment of a debt to his brother Richard of Cornwall, he assigns and makes over to him " all my Jews of England." f

William Rufus (William II of England) actually for­bade the conversion of a Jew to the Christian faith. " It was a poor exchange," he said, " that would rid him of a valuable property and give him only a subject."

Under Edward I^of England the Jews were plundered and amerced to such an extent that it is estimated that they paid over one tenth of the entire revenue of the crown.

An explanation of the apparently anomalous circum­stance that the Jews, although deprived of all civil rights and debarred from following most occupations, were able to be plundered to such an extent, is found in the fact that they were the " royal usurers," and under the king's protection spoliated through extreme usurious interest the Norman barons, who were always in want of money, and were not the men to readily tolerate " benevolences," or any other form of direct taxation for supplying the king with money necessary for the support of the government. So that when the king plundered the Jewish money lenders, he in reality obtained indirectly the money he needed from his barons, with far less odium and more profit than if he had proceeded against them indirectly.

Very curiously, this mediaeval idea of regarding the Jews as a permanent, legitimate, and desirable source of revenue for the state, continued to find favour 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 sem-

* Such a case of urgent necessity or inexcusable obstinacy must have been assumed as existing by King John, of whom it is re­lated that on one occasion he demanded the sum of ten thousand marks (thirty thousand dollars) of a Jew at Bristol, and on hie refusal to pay, ordered one of his teeth to be drawn every day until he should comply. The Jew, it is chronicled, lost seven teeth and then paid the sum required of him.

t Oxford Essays. By J. Bridges, Fellow of Oriel.-

8

106 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OP TAXATION.

blance of taxation, a hundred thousand pounds from the Jews, and the proposition was at first favourably 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 defence­less, 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 offences; 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

* Macaulay's History of England, vol. iii, chap. xv.

RIGHT OP ROYAL FISH. Ю7

land to another; and from the eale of titles, which even as late as 1626, under Charlee I, afforded considerable reve­nues. The right of marriage was subject (at least in the case of nobles and gentry) to the consent of the crown; and in some instances large sums were paid for the privi­lege ; Simon de Montfort paying Henry III a sum, equiva­lent to five hundred thousand dollars at present, for per­mission to control the marriage of the heir of Gilbert d'TJnfrankville. Mr. Dowell, in his Hietory of Taxation in England, quotes the following as among one of the " fiscal curiosities" to be found on the Rolls of the Exchequer during the early Norman period: " Ralph Bardolph fines in five marks for leave to arise from his infirmity. The Bishop of Winchester owes a tonell of good wine for not reminding the king (John) about a girdle for the Countess of Albemarle; and Robert de Vaux fines in five of the best palfreys, that the same king would hold his tongue about the wife of Henry Pinel." *

Another branch of the ancient revenues of the English crown worthy of epecial notice from its singular recog­nition within a comparatively recent period, was the right to " royal fish," meaning thereby the whale and the stur­geon, when the same were either cast ashore or caught near the coast; and which were originally acquired by the crown on the assumption that the sovereign guarded and protected the seas from pirates and robbers. This perquisite had so long been in abeyance that its sanction by law was hardly recognised in 1850, when the Duke of Wellington, as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, claimed and exacted the price—fifty pounds—of the carcass of a whale brought ashore and sold by certain boatmen on the coast of Kent. A point of contention was made by the boatmen, that, since the law was enacted, natural science had proved that the whale was not a fish; but the duke insisted upon his right under the letter of the law of compact with his office of warden—i. e., to protect the seas—as representative of the sovereign, and maintained it. He, however, subse­quently practically admitted the lack of any moral founda­tion for his claim by dividing the price, after it had been formally paid him, with the boatmen.