made, it was not long before enough weak points in that system were discovered. Already the fundamental defect of a general property tax-a defect that becomes more fatal as a community makes industrial progress—was beginning to be painfully evident; and we have the commencement of that series of skirmishes so familiar to the student of taxation, between the tax-layers on the one hand and the tax-payers on the other, in which the former find themselves impelled to more and more drastic measures for discovering and dragging out before the assessors the ever-multiplying forms of intangible personal property, and the latter are rather diverted than embarrassed by the necessity of devising means for evading every new turn of their pursuers. The first move of the game in Massachusetts was made by the legislature, May 7th, 1651:

"To the end that all public charges may be equally borne, and that some may not to be eased and other burdened, and being found by experience that visible estates in lands, corn, cattle, are, according to rule, wholly and fairly taxed, but the estates of merchants, in the hands of neighbors and strangers, or their factors, are not so obvious to view, but, upon search, title of these estates do appear, being of great value, so that the law doth not reach them by that rule of taxing visible estates, it is therefore ordered and enacted by this court and the authority thereof that all merchants, shopkeepers and factors shall be assessed by the rule of common estimation, according to the will and doom of the assessors in such cases appointed, having regard to their stock and estate, be it presented to view or not, in whose hands soever it be, that such great estates as come yearly into the country may bear their proportion in public charges; yet if any find themselves overvalued, if they can make it appear to the assessors, they are to be eased by them; if not, by the next court."

§14. Attempts at Equalization.

An act of May 6th, 1657, declares that "Whereas it is evident that there is much injustice and inequality in the assessment of public rates in each town within this jurisdiction,

whereby some are eased, others burdened, and the commonwealth prejudiced, for the prevention thereof it is ordered that houses and lands of all sorts shall be rated at an equal and indifferent value according to their worth in the towns where they lie." This seems to show that the comparative unavailability of real estate as a basis for general, as opposed to local, taxation was already beginning to be felt with the expansion of the province. On April 29th, 1668, a commission consisting of six members was appointed to visit each county, meeting the commissioners from all the towns therein, at a particular place in the county, to examine and equalize the lists. On May 15th, the commission reported that they had visited all the counties, and, though much embarrassed by the imperfection of the lists, had performed their duties by raising or lowering the taxes in various towns, according to their judgment, in the spirit and letter of the law. On October 21st, 1669, "the commissioners of the several shire towns," having met, according to the order of the court and having perfected the assessments of the several towns, and transcribed them to the colony treasurer, now petition the court for their pay. Finally, on October 11th, 1682, the court declared that so many farms are laid out outside of the towns and so pay no rates though the land is rising in value, the owners of such farms must thereafter pay two shillings per one hundred acres, the selectmen of each town to take account of all such farms lying near their towns.3

§15. Rate and “Rates."

The materials for ascertaining the rate of taxation under the first charter, while they are not complete for the first few years, become much fuller after 1650. In the absence of positive contemporary evidence it may be presumed that the propor

1 Original report in Felt's Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 100, p. 127.

2 Massachusetts Records, IV., Pt. 2., 444.

3 Massachusetts Records, V., 376.

tion of one penny to every twenty shillings of the value of estates, which had become the usual rate before 1646, and which by the act of November 4th in that year was established by the general court as the legal rate upon "lands and goods," was fixed upon as the proportion which, in the light of experience, ought to yield a sum nearly or quite sufficient to meet the public expenses, when reckoned upon the property of the colony and taken together with the proceeds of the poll tax. Certainly the inhabitants of the colony were good enough mathematicians to know that in a computation in which the base and the rate per cent. are both fixed quantities the product is also a fixed quantity; but if they hoped, by fixing upon an unvarying rate to be applied annually to the property in the colony, to limit the expenditure by the gov ernment to the sum thus obtained, it was not long before the futility of their attempt was manifest. The ingenuity of the colonial legislators was, however, sufficient for the emergency that arose when it became evident that the whole amount of property in the colony, as returned by the commissioners, was not increasing at as rapid a rate as the public expenses were. From the passage of the act of November 13th, 1655, which ordered one and one-quarter rates to be laid, the one penny per every twenty shillings ceased to be the rate and became a "rate." It was the old scheme of reduplication that had long before been practiced in England in multiplying the tenths and fifteenths. In Massachusetts not only was the rate of the "rate" thus increased, but the early practice of making more than one levy per year was revived when occasion demanded. On the other hand, in 1670 only "half a rate" was levied; and in 1672 it was ordered' that no rate at all be levied, as the income from wines, peltry, etc., was sufficient to meet the public expenses. From this time on till the loss of the charter the rates were added to or multiplied year by year, the number rising in some years as high as sixteen, noticeably in 1676

1 Act of October 8th, 1672.

The average for Yet the pleasing

to meet the expenses of King Philip's war. the whole time was not far from four. theory was still maintained that the regular rate was but one penny per pound, and the assessors found themselves relieved by the legislature of one of their most disagreeable duties.

§ 16. The Poll Tax.

By far the most interesting feature of Massachusetts finances under the first charter is the poll tax. What has already been said of the simplicity of the machinery for assessing and collecting the property tax is equally true of the poll tax; in fact, the machinery for both the taxes was identical, both being apportioned and assessed by the same body, though at first at different times of the year, and collected together in a single sum. The poll tax entered, together with the property and faculties taxes, as a component element into the sums which the deputies apportioned among the towns. The taxpayers and exemptions were the same as in the case of the property tax. The rate, too, in the case of polls, was regarded as being the same as that in the case of property, viz., one penny per pound. But instead of ascertaining by inquiry the money value of each unit to be assessed, as was done in the case of the property tax, an arbitrary sum was taken as the common value of each adult male poll in the colony-a theory sufficiently democratic, one would suppose, to satisfy the demands of the most uncompromising social leveler. By the important act of November 4th, 1646, already referred to, and the first rule upon this point which we have seen, the amount of the poll tax was placed at twenty pence for each taxpayer-the base upon which it was reckoned being, of course, twenty pounds. There is reason for believing that the same figure had then been in use from the beginning of the poll tax in Massachusetts. The next year, October 27th, 1647, the rate of the poll tax was raised to two shillings six pence; but August 30th, 1653, a return was made to the old rate, and

November 7th, 1690, the tax was reduced to twelve pence for each "rate."

§ 17. The Reduplication of Poll Taxes.

It is not, however, in these particulars that the chief interest of the Massachusetts colonial poll tax lies to students of fiThat interest attaches to the amounts, astonishing enough, whether considered absolutely or in comparison with the corresponding amounts yielded by the property tax, which were exacted from each male inhabitant of the colony under the system of reduplication of rates already described. It was certainly an unfortunate day for all but the wealthiest colonists of Massachusetts when the expedient of reduplicating rates was applied to them; for it must be understood-and here lies the point of the whole matter-that the doubling, or trebling, or quadrupling of a "rate" meant the doubling, or trebling, or quadrupling, not only of the property tax, but of the poll tax as well; and, the poll tax being the same for rich and poor alike, the inequality of any reduplication increased in geometrical ratio, in favor of or against the taxpayer, according as he possessed more or less than the average amount of property for each taxpayer. An attempt of the writer to collect sufficient data from which to construct a continuous diagram, showing the actual amount of the poll tax in Massachusetts for each year, from the beginning to 1680, has thus far proved unsuccessful. Such a table would convey better than can any verbal description an idea of the state of things that drew from the long-suffering townsmen of Boston in 1653 a petition, one of the most valuable of our early financial documents, in which they truly say: "In respect of polle money we apprehend its parallel is not in any country where the sword is not drawn in offensive or defensive war." But although the petitioners make in their memorial four propositions looking toward the more equable distribution of taxes, they offer no

1 Original petition in Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 100, p. 44.