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ference so far as to desire him to be more economical in his household . ¦ The subsequent history of the power of taxation in these countries is , however , by no means in accordance with this beginning . The defective constitution of the Castilian Cortes was further impaired by irregularities insidiously converted by the crown into permanent changes ; the effect of which was gradually ; , but surely , to transfer to the king that power which departed from an assembly deprived of its popular basis . In the fourteenth centur }' , the Cortes , stimulated hy recent encroachments , were able to obtain from the king an express engagement to abstain in
future from raising money by taxes without their consent ; and they were strong enough , after that period , to refuse subsidies , and to call for accounts . But three hundred years later , although meanwhile even Charles V ., in the height of his political power and his pecuniary embarrassments , had not laid a tax without their concurrence , yet such had been their real decay , that they only ventured to petition against illegal ordinances . The Cortes itself had declined from an assembly of 190 representatives from more than ninety towns , to a body of deputies from only seventeen towns , and those conservatively jealous of an increase by admitting other towns to the representation .
In England , discontent at taxation led m the eleventh century to frequent collisions between the barons and the king , the former often having , in this common quarrel , the natural aid of the commonalty . The extorting of Magna Charta from John , in 1215 , was followed by a great accession to the active appreciation of public liberty ; and in 1264 , the Commons were admitted to that share in determining the nature and amount of the public imposts , which was finally made paramount in the struggles with the Stuarts , and has ever since led to the most momentous improvements in the purposes and machinery of government in general .
After Spain and England had been , for a length of time , engaged in these struggles with the early difficulties and obscurities of the question of national taxation , France entered on the same course ; but although she made some efforts for liberty , she never had a permanent control equal to that of Castile over the demands of the government ; and her taxation fell sooner by a century into the unchecked power of the king . Separate from tho imposts and charges levied by feudal lords , within their own estates , and from those accruing to the crown from the incidents of the feudal system , tho first tax in France seems to have been a gift to the king , Louis-le-Jeune , by a popular assembly in 1145 , of a twentieth part of the income of each person for four years , for the support of the crusade then being prosecuted .
Several other subsidies followed m succeeding reigns ; and in 1290 , Phillipe the Fair put a tax on all merchandize sold in the kingdom—a device readily derived from the practices of the day ; for every petty lord , who was strong enough , fleeced for his own profit whatever merchandize passed his castlo ; just as for ages it has been done in India . The same king having overcome tho resistance of the feudatory barons to the authority of the royal legislation within their possessions , culled together tho States General in 1302 , and admitted to that assembly the representatives of towns , under the
title of tiers-etat , or third estate , as they hud been admitted to the English parliament in 1264-. This assembly required that tho produce of the taxes should be placed in tho hands of persons of their own appointment , and not in those of tho agents of the king . Their object was to ensure tho duo appropriation of those funds to tho expenses of tho war with England , which wur was tho necessity alleged for the taxation . Sixty years before , the barons of England ( the commons not being yet represented in parliament , ) hud ( intrusted tho taxes to administrators separato from tho
officers of tho crown . Tho Stilton General , hi 1 IJ 04 , wont further still , in nominating' nine commissioners , throe- of each order , to docido disputes arising out of mutters connected with tho taxes . In 1314 , Louis Ilutin is said to have bound himself to impose no taxes without consent of the States General—ii point which , in that generation , was as much in debute in Spain and England as in France . In 1318 , l'hilip the Lung attempted to impose the tax on Halt , or Id naMie ; the discontent it occasioned
compelled him to call together tho States General , in which ho declared tho tax temporary , and justified it by tho exigencies of tho war . In 1 . 328 , ho re-established and augmented it by mere force- of prerogative . Tho gabr . lle , or tax on . sail ; , like tho aides , or tax on merchandize , seems to have boon merely an adaptation to national purposes of a practice long before established by tho rapacity or needs of feudal nobles . Some agos previous to thin time , an impost on salt had formed ono of tho inmiy exactions by which Uiv owner
of a castle had often made a profit by means of his strong arm , whether in his hands it was a local and novel device , or the remains of an ancient national tax diverted to his own use . In 1355 , during the troubled period preceding and following the . battle of Poitiers , the States General appointed a committee of the three orders to consult with the king , arid also deputies of -their own to superintend the assessment and collection of the taxes they granted . Charles V ., the succeeding king , endeavoured to rid himself of the control of the States , at first in vain ; but in 1359 , he succeeded , and imposed taxes without their consent , as his father had done . From this period the king sometimes was
bound by promise to abstain from taxing by his own authority ; v and sometimes he did as he pleased , without regard to promise , until at length Louis XI ., after the middle of the fifteenth century , taxed the kingdom at will with remorseless and unsparing hand ; it was only during the minority of his successor that any considerable attempt was made to restore the liberties of the nation in the matter of taxes , and even then with little permanent success . The king nominated and dismissed at pleasure the generals , or chief superintendents of finances , who had originally been appointed by the States General ; and the constitution of the administration of taxes was put into the form which , with variations of detail , it retained down to the date of the great Revolution .
It was in 1379 , during the penod of struggling transition to the undivided power of the crown , that to the aides and gabelle was added the fonage , or hearth-tax , afterwards known by the name of la taille . It is said , but on no sufficient authority , to have been granted in perpetuity by the States in 1439 ; and being without a definite basis of assessment , it grew in later times into one of the severest of the severe inflictions of the old French taxation .
The system by which these various taxes were managed became in time a source of extreme waste and oppression . Our space does not permit us to enter on this part of the subject , or to specify the smaller , but not less vexatious taxes , which were added to the principal imposts we have mentioned . The embarrassments of the system seem to have led , as in India , to the device of farming the revenues ; and that device only added to former evils others peculiarly its own . Where simplicity and directness of relation do not so prevail as' to facilitate the reference of technical facts
to original principles , and where integrity and clearsightedness do not control the actual proceedings , every artificial plan intended to meet the consequences , only brings round the same ev ils again in new forms , and with aggravated effect . To evade the difficulty of direct administration of the taxes which arises from want of integrity , by resorting to the practice of farming , is only to replace the dishonesty or rapacity of the . government and its officers , by those of substitutes interested in aggravating every abuse to the last degree at which it can be borne .
The evils of the farming system are indeed so obvious , that we now look back with astonishment on their being endured at all . The fact , however , was that that system lasted for many generations . The explanation is , that , established and long continued abuses appear at the time to most minds as parts of a necessary system of things , and it is rarely possible while they exist , to kIiow the real nature and extent of their ill consequences . Time , and the moans of comparison , alone supply a detection of tho truth ; and we are probably now labouring , although in a great men sure unconsciously , under evils which our successors will scrutinize with curiosity and wonder not unlike those we bestow on the fiscal enormities of feudal France .
In those early ages of modern European civilization , the chief question debated between rulers and people , was that of taxation ; liberty and its results were little understood , and modern law was yet but growing out a vague and often perverted sense of right . The power of tho people grew or faded as they maintained or neglected their control over the supply of funds to the monarch , and their influence over tho expenditure of those funds . Wo must remark , however , that this was a result only of tho circumstances of the times ; and more advanced states of . society should witness , not
indeed a relaxed attention to the raising and upending of tho national revenue , but a diminution of tho relative importance of the subject , as compared with other and hi" -her matters . It can bo from no natural necessity that tho greater part of the attention of every government is abHorbed , and tho greater part of tho discontents of every people occasioned , by questions relating to tho taxes ; and probably tho greatest improvement which tho progress of society has brought within reach at present is to be effected by so establishing our taxation on just , natural , nnd permanent principles , a « to loa . vo thp attention both of governments and people
free tor the higher objects , m respect of which the taxes should only take rank as defraying the incidental charges
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JUSTICE TO MB . AKCHDEA . CON DKNISON . Air esteemed correspondent , who certainly cannot be accused of sympathy with the High . Church party , thinks that " Denison and his friends have had hard measure . " " Denison , " ho continues , " is right in saying' that the aphorism , A Churchman should have no politics , ' does nofc apply to the members of the Established Church , and that the act of Gladstone ' s is a distinct piece of political latitudinarianism , such as he spent the early part of his life in denouncing , and which , they still denounce . " We have never disputed the fact . Our ground of quarrel with Mr . Denison is , that he , who abominates Erastianism and State Churchmanship — that he who concurred with " D . C . L . " in his now famous aphorism , should suddenly turn round , and take a violent part in politics , not only
in his own University , where the anomaly of a clerical constituency makes the act somewhat excusable , but in his own county of Somerset . We have always pointed out the extraordinary position of the Established Church , which makes its priests politicians , and rewards them for being so . And we last week ventured to comment on the inconsisttney of this dependence with that independence demanded by Church principles , and to point out that the true , the possibly saving course for the Clergy , would be to leave politics alone , and attend to their clerical duties . Mr . Denison has fairly a right to that defence which places him in the ranks of State Churchmen and political parsons . But we still hold that it is a shocking fact that a rdember of the Church of England , professing strict Anglican principles , can conscientiously become a hot politician .
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ME . JUSTICE CEAMPTOSS CONSISTENCY . On Thursday we were informed , on no less authority than that of the Times , quoting Mr . John Wynne , the late Irish Under-Secretary , that Lord ! Eglinton was induced to commute the capital sentence pronounced upon Kirwan at the suggestion of the two Judges who tried him . The information is gratifying but odd . Were not these tho very gentlemen who sympathized with the verdict , and was not one of them Mr . Justice Crampton , the man who assured the " wretched criminal" that there was but " a
short period left to him in this world ? " We have a dim and misty recollection that this pious Judge did , whilst postponing the execution of the capital sentence for an . unprecedentedly long time , go with unctuous particularity int ^) tho origin of Kirwan ' s immorality , and the prime cause of his ultimate execution . We cannot forget an illogical , but virtuous , expression of judicial indignation at adultery , and an opinion , from the Bench , that irregular affections must invariably result in hanging . But of course
we do not for a moment suppose that the Judge who , aspiring to tho chaplaincy—vacant at the time , wo presume—assured tho convict that in a month he might realize " overlasting happiness , " and obtain " a crown of eternal glory , " was at that timo intending to recommend him to mercy , or to Leg of Lord Eglinton to commuto a sentencewhich ho then said — possibly believed — was righteously pronounced . Wo arc rather inclined to credit tho account which tolls that , in tho fervour of mistaken
orthodoxy , tho learned Judge fancied that he was doing a service to roligion in promoting injustice ; and that upon reflection , find on weeing the earnest protest made hy us and others in favour of law and of tho principles of ovidenco , ho repented him of his Lynching eccentricity , nnd determined most honourably , though at tho sacrifice of liia consistency , to assist in Having tho life of ono whom ho had improperly , though honestly , helped fo convict . Would that Lord Campbell might do the . same , and , having had his Hing at tho Inquisition , and his cheers from the mob —• tho only pernons who arc over likely to approve him—nay boldly that the . verdict which his . small jokes and great ,
partiality succeeded in obtaining was as wrong as regarded Dr . Newman , whom everybody knows to be innocent , as wns that duotoMr .. ! list . iccCrampLoti concerning Kirwan , whom nobody believes to have been proved guilty . As totheullinintedcstinulionof Iv . ir \ van , aiidtlionicroconiiiiiitatioiioflii 3 sentence , thin much remains to be snid . True , lie i . s either , an law goes , innocent or guilty . Me either deservesenpitnl punishment more than ever did any man whoso en recr curled at Tyburn , or ho i . s injured and ill-used , anil wnlks tho earth nn instance of what prejudiced juries -married men ,
probably , for Hie most . purl , -may do in the way of injiiHtiee where—perhaps under tho presume of domestic inlluonei ) - -they venture , possibly on a basis of experience , toHay , that the jealousy of a wife I hough of twelve years' standing , and not . proved , i . s a Hullicient motive for her minder by a husband , ami ( bat , assuming the murder , tho supposed motive may be deemed identical with tho unknown cause . But Lord Kgliiiton linn , it , must , bo admitted , Miuh much of apology . Ho may fairly say it . was not . for him to recommend her Majesty to do what wan unconstitutional , to ( , oll tho jury thai they had forgotten thoir oaths , or t } io
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January 29 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 109
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 29, 1853, page 109, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1971/page/13/
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