'The vote of the court of assistants of the Massachusetts colony, at their third meeting in America,' levying a tax upon all the freemen of the colony, was thus clearly an act of usurpation, which became legitimate only by the acquiescence of every freeman so rated. The power to tax having once become in the government of Massachusetts a fait accompli—which the charter of Charles II. ignored and that of William and Mary confirmed we are henceforth concerned only with the history of taxation as an integral part of the fiscal policy of that gov

ernment.

§ 6. The Development of Taxation.

It is to the triumph of the proselyting over the mercantile spirit among the members of the company in London that we are to attribute the selection, October 20th, 1629, for the important duty of transferring the charter and government of the company itself to New England, of John Winthrop, a man who, however well educated he may have been in the learning of his day, however amiable in domestic and social relations, in a word was too intently devoted to recording prodigies of threeheaded calves" to give adequate attention to the management of his own property, to say nothing of developing an original financial policy for the colony over which he presided with suave and conscientious tyranny. The tendency of colonists in all times merely to reproduce upon new soil the institutions of the mother country was allowed full play in Massachusetts by the absence on the part of the early governors of any positive interest in, if not by the presence in them of actual con

1 On September 28th, 1630.

2 See Winthrop's History of New England II., 311.

3 Hutchinson, speaking of Winthrop's being called sharply to account for his financial transactions while governor, says that he "might have torn his book of accounts, as Scipio Africanus did, and given the ungrateful people this answer: A colony now in a flourishing state has been led out and settled under my direction. My own substance is consumed. Spend no more time in harangues, but give thanks to God."-Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, I., 140.

tempt for, all financial concerns. Accordingly we find introduced, as a matter of course, as one exigency after another called for successive increases in the public revenue, the general property tax, imposts, excises, the capitation tax, the income tax and taxes on certain specified classes of property— all of them forms of taxation with which the colonists had already become familiar in England. Indeed, so conservative have the people been that these remained the only forms resorted to, not only during the colonial and provincial periods, but long after Massachusetts became a state independent of the British crown.

$7. The Property Tax.

Unlike the imposts and excises that constituted almost the sole sources of revenue for their commercial neighbors in New Netherland,' the backbone of the loose-jointed fiscal organization which, prior to the middle of the seventeenth century, had become sufficiently developed among the farmers of Massachusetts Bay to admit of its identification, was a general property tax, levied at first as the occasion of the hour demanded, and afterward with greater regularity, upon the estates of the freemen of the colony. The machinery for assessing and collecting this tax was as simple as the theory underlying the assessment was just; and neither theory nor machinery underwent much, if any, alteration during the colonial period. Indeed, as we shall see in subsequent sections, it was essentially the colonial system of taxation that extended quite through the provincial period, and even well into the present century.

§8. Apportionment, Repartition and Assessment.

The first step in the history of one of these early colonial property taxes was the apportionment among the various

1 Schwab, History of the New York Property Tax, 19.

2 The act of November 24th, 1646, first provided for yearly taxes.

towns of the colony of the sum granted by the general court to be raised. At first the apportionment was made by the general court itself in proportions agreed upon among the deputies, who, as long as the number of towns in the colony remained small, had a better knowledge than any one else of the value of the property in each. But the growth of the colony in wealth and population soon rendering this plan unsatisfactory, an act of May 16th, 1636, named thirteen freemen of the colony as a committee "with power to require the last rates of each town in the plantation, and find out thereby and by all other means they can, according to the best of their discretion, the true value of every town and so to make an • equal rate"-the committee to meet in Boston on a day appointed in the act, and there to determine the apportionment. As evidenced by numerous references, this plan was continued as late at least as 1640, on May 13th of which year a rate of £1200 was granted and the usual apportionment committee appointed.

There are reasons for believing that for the first sixteen years of the existence of the colony the repartition among the taxpayers of the quotas determined for the towns by the general court and the apportionment committees was made by the selectmen of the respective towns. The principle upon which assessments were to be made was laid down by the general court as early as May 14th, 1634: "In all rates and public charges the towns [through their assessors] shall have respect to levy every man according to his estate, and with consideration all other his abilities whatsoever, and not according to the number of his persons." The language of the acts of this and of later periods is often ambiguous, and there is no reason for supposing that the ideas of their framers, upon fiscal matters, were either very definite or very systematic. An order of the general court under date of May 3d, 1636, “explains " an order of May, 1634, according to which all men were "to be

1

1 Massachusetts Records, 1., 168.

rated in all rates according to their whole ability wheresoever it lyes," by enacting that thenceforth "all men that live in this jurisdiction be rated only in the place where they live to all public rates, and those that live not in this jurisdiction are to have their goods, stocks and lands rated where they are in being." June 6th, 1639, an act was passed declaring that estates in England should be taxed for what they were worth;2 but this was repealed two years later."

1

§ Taxpayers; Exemptions.

The restriction of taxation to freemen of the colony resulted, as long as all the adult male inhabitants of the colony were freemen, in manhood taxation. When the number of men who were debarred from becoming freemen because they were not church members, and who thus escaped taxation altogether, had become so large that the manhood basis began to be seriously impaired, the colonial government took a further step in the extension of their prerogative and in the development of taxation from voluntary contribution, by enacting that all male inhabitants above the age of sixteen years, whether church members or not, "servant or other," must contribute to the common charges; and that if they did not do so voluntarily, they must be assessed and compelled to. In 1665' the court declared that so many strangers came into the colony with cargoes, which they disposed of in time to depart before the next tax, that thereafter the cargoes should be taxed when they came in; that if the owners refused to disclose the value of them, the goods should be "doomed," and the collectors should be given power to distrain them.

From the beginning, certain exemptions to the general rule of taxation were made. Sometimes the exemption would be 1 Massachusetts Records, I., 168.

made on account of poverty resulting from old age, sickness, lameness, blindness, or such other infirmity as appeared to the selectmen to disable the man from contributing. Sometimes it was regarded as a partial or complete compensation for public services, as in the case of troopers,' of magistrates to the extent of £500' and of professors in Harvard College to the extent of £100 personal property. At other times exemptions were accorded for the encouragement of enterprises likely to prove of public benefit, such as the fisheries, from time to time, and the iron works set up in Braintree; or as pure gratuities, as when the exemption on account of age, at first confined to individual cases, was extended to all inhabitants over sixty years old, on the supposition of the general inability of such persons to contribute. It is impossible from any data known to exist to ascertain the exact proportion of all these exemptions to the whole population of the colony; but probably it was small. A more serious factor in disturbing the universality of taxation was the custom which prevailed from a very early time, of partially or wholly exempting, by special enactments, for several years at a time, towns newly settled or lately ravaged by the Indians. A remonstrance of the town of Boston to the general court in September, 1653,

The practice of exempting troopers existed before 1648. July 9th, 1675. troopers not exempt from rates for Indian war. October 13th, troopers' exemption limited to one rate annually. Massachusetts Records, V., 49, 94-5

* May 14th, 1645, Massachusetts Records, II., 101; November 4th, 1646.

* Massachusetts Records, IV., 537. They were more fully exempted by the act of June 19th, 20th, 1754-'5, c. 11.

4 Massachusetts Records, I., 257.

* March 7th, 1043–4, Massachusetts Records, II., 62.

May 14th, 105o, Groton freed for three years from the date of the grant Massachusetts Records, IV., Pt. I., 262.-June, 1661, Springfield and Northampton rate free one year, to build prison to cost not less than £60, Massachusetts Records, IV., Pt. II., 21.-June 3d, 1674, Southfield exempt for four years, Massachusetts Records, V., 13—October 12th, 1676, abatements to Medfield, Weymouth, Hingham, Sudbury, Concord, Chelmsford, Andover, Springfield, Northampton and Hadley; but one to Hampshire refused. Massachusetts Records, V., 122 et seq.