Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/183

FINANCE 173 Economy oj Athens. But the principles of the assessment are very simple, though the process by which the result was finally arrived at is somewhat artificial. The property of every Athenian citizen was assessed, whether it were movable or immovable, and the amount was entered in a public register. The assessment included ths value of slaves, manufactured goods, and raw materials. A register of the assessment was open for examination, and undoubtedly re-valuations were frequent. The state was informed as to the property which each citizen and indeed every resident alien possessed, and made this property the basis of direct taxation. It then pro ceeded to divide all assessments into several schedules, assuming in each schedule a variable quantity, varying from a fifth to a tenth, as the taxable property of the individual. On this sum it levied a fixed rate. Thus, if a very wealthy man possessed an estate valued at 500 talents, i.e., nearly 122,000, his taxable wealth was treated as 24,400, and a five per cent, tax, 1220, exacted from him; while the owner of property valued at 25 mime, i.e., about 101, 10s., the lowest sum apparently which was liable to property tax, found his property assessed for purposes of taxation at 10, 3s., and his property tax of five per cent, at a little over 10s. In the budget speech which the great statesman of ths Athenian empire delivered before the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and of which Thucydides gives us the heads, we learn that the revenue of Athens from the contributions cf her allies amounted on an average to GOO talents (147,250) a year, and that there was an existing accumulation of treasure in coined silver amounting to a million and a half sterling, besides other immediate resources. It is to be regretted that the historian did not supply us with further particulars as to the finance of his country during the period of her greatest wealth and power. These resources, had Athens merely carried on a defensive warfare, would, as the statesman justly argued, have rendered the country not only unconquerable, but practi cally invulnerable. The high rate of interest, and the general insecurity of society, excluded the states of ancient Greece from having recourse to regular loans, though not from attempting to meet current exigencies by anticipations of revenue. Occasionally portions of the revenue were assigned to creditors ; sometimes the public lands were granted for a term, during which the principal and interest might be repaid. Instances may even be found in which the state issued a currency of tokens, which fulfilled some of the functions of state paper in modern times. Another financial expedient, always followed by the most mischievous consequences, was occasionally adopted, the issue, namely, of a debased currency. But from this fraud Athens always kept hersslf free, not only inflicting the punishment of death on those who put base money into circulation (the criminal code of Athens having been generally very lenient), but abstaining in her deepest distress from the temptation of supplementing her revenues by the temporary issue of base money So studious was Athens of her reputation in this respect that, when she was the home of the fine arts, she continued to maintain the clumsy archaic type of her coinage, although the arts of die-sinking and coining were carried to perfection in states which were far less scrupulous. The revenue of Rome in the earlier ages of the republic was derived from the lands of the state, payments in kind or money from subjects, from import and export duties, and a few taxes on products and articles of luxury. Partly as compensation for the loss of the national domain, partly as a means of checking discontent, the state, in the later ages of the republic and the beginning of the empire, undertook the maintenance of its poorer citizens, either by gratuitous distributions of corn, or by the sale of food at low fixed prices. Cicero calculates the charge incurred by the revenue in consequence of this expedient at one-fifth of the public expenditure. Augustus increased the charges of maintaining these state paupers till the cost amounted to more than half of what had been the revenue of republican Rome. The emperor Vespasian declared (Suet., Vcsp. 16) that the necessities of government in Rome required a sum of 400,000,000 sterling, apparently after the destructive civil war which preceded the elevation of the Flavian family to the throne. But the manner in which the revenue of the Roman empire was collected was even more destructive than the crushing weight of the charge itself. The collection of taxes in Rome, both under the republic and the early empire, was entrusted to contractors, who purchased by auction the right of levying the tax. The character of the Roman contractor is aptly illustrated by Livy, who narrates the frauds practised by those persons on the Roman treasury during the deepest distresses of the second Punic war, and the violence with which other contractors defended the interests of the order in general, and the convicts in particular. But after the Macedonian war, the Roman citizen was relieved from direct taxes, the weight of which fell on the provincials. Associations of wealthy men were formed, who could give security to the Government, and who, being protected by the Government, could practice what extortion they pleased on the provin cials. The law, indeed, provided that such persons should be liable to prosecution for corrupt and illegal practices, but the law was far too weak to check the malpractices of the officials. It appears that the province was divided into districts, or dioceses, as they are called, a manager being appointed for each district, who was in regular correspond ence with the chief of the office at Rome. The law recognized the guild of the publicans, who were indeed, by their agency, the centre of the Roman system of finance, and in many emergencies the parties with whom the state negotiated for an advance on the security of its revenues. But, on the other hand, it was said with too much truth that where the tax-gatherer appeared public law and private liberty vanished. Taxes paid in kind were the tenth of corn and the fifth of fruit. Such taxes were imposed in Sicily, in Africa, in Sardinia, and in Egypt. Spain was treated more generously, partly to compensate for the reputed unproductiveness of its soil, partly in all likelihood from fear of the high- spirited character of its inhabitants. In some cases, the contributor of the tithe had to carry his quota to the nearest port for shipment to Rome. The rest of the empire paid money taxes, partly from an assessment on the value of property, partly by what appears to be a poll tax, but was really an artificial estimate, under which several needy persons might be made to represent a unit, and on the other hand one wealthy person might be treated as many units. The assessment lasted for a definite period, which, in the age of Constantine at least, got the name of the Indiction. In the sense of a tax, this term is as old as Pliny, if indeed it cannot be carried back to the early empire. The finance of the Roman empire imposed a tax on the profits of trade, which seems to have been collected with great severity, and to have exposed those who were liable to it to strict scrutiny, and to degrading punishments in case of default. Capitation taxes were levied on cattle, on imports and exports, on slaves kept for the purpose of luxury, on auctions (1 per cent), on sales in the public markets, analogous to the octroi in the French towns, on salt works, on emancipated slaves, and on successions in cases where the inheritance went by devise to strangers.