of Spain up to 1808 is attributable more to the influence of a tax on sales than to any other one cause; and that, on the other hand, the great wealth and prosperity of Holland in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and the control of a commerce that made its ships the chief carriers and their ports the chief depots of the products of the world, were due mainly to a system of taxation that imposed the minimum of restriction on exchanges, domestic or foreign, and entailed the least friction upon its own people; while in all other and competitive countries the direct reverse of such a fiscal policy found favor and existed.
The Place of Taxation in History.—A clear and exhaustive statement of the world's experience in respect to what is called taxation would be almost equivalent to a universal history; and in default of this, a review of the most prominent features of such experience is the only alternative, and is capable of being made in the highest degree interesting and instructive.
While the farthest reach of history touches no period when government or the state has not appropriated for its maintenance or pleasure the property or services of its subjects or citizens, the present ideas respecting taxation are so essentially modern that little or no recognition of them can be found in either ancient or mediæval history. In fact, no taxes, in the present ordinary sense of the term, were needed in ancient times to carry on government or public institutions. The monarch, king, chief, lord, or other sovereign of any particular district or country was generally the owner of all the landed property within his empire or domain; and the people who cultivated it were his villeins, serfs, or tenants. "The theory of English (and also of Chinese) land tenures to-day is, that the original title is in the king or emperor, and that everybody who has an interest in land is a tenant. There is no such thing known to this day in England as an allodial title that is, one which is absolute as to the ownership of the soil, and which is mainly the one recognized in the United States. As a consequence, all land in England is held mediately or immediately of the king, and there is no allodial tenure."[1]
A sovereign who owned all the land of a country, and could at his will take any portion of the labor products of the people who cultivated or occupied it, obviously was exempt from the necessity of resorting to any other form of levy upon persons or property for the support of the state or for his pleasure; and this
- ↑ Miller, on the Constitution of the United States. "Out of this fact come many of the difficulties American students find in regard to the doctrines pertaining to estates and tenancies. Our laws have been freed from a large part of these intricacies and traditional requirements, which were the outgrowth of centuries of development among our English ancestors regarding the holding of land, but their influence still embarrasses our judicial system" (ibid., pp. 231, 232).
