to be done. And tireless, accurate, and scrupulously honest compilations from the sources are always welcome. Yet one wishes that where there has been so much labor the rewards and praise might be more nearly commensurate. There is no bibliography and the index is inadequate.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.

ALBERT BEEBE WHITE.

English Taxation 1640-1799. By WILLIAM KENNEDY. Series of the London School of Economics and Political Science, No. XXXIII. London, G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1913.-ix, 199 pp.

This is an interesting and important book. It is very appropriately described by its sub-title as an Essay on Policy and Opinion. The historical parts, based on an extensive study of contemporary records and discussions, lead to conclusions which seem mature and well supported. Whether they have all the novelty the essayist seems to claim is perhaps doubtful. But the orderly presentation of the growth of tax ideas and policy, especially in the first part of the book, is masterly.

The essayist is not so happy when he leaves the true historical field and tries to summarize social theory. There is to be found at the close of the history of the period from 1640 to 1713 a chapter on "Political Philosophy and the Taxation of the Poor." This chapter begins with the statement that "the problem of the distribution of taxation in England has always been one of distribution among individuals of widely different economic and social status (page 82). It then sets up the classes, and proceeds to establish a political philosophy "which may be termed the freeholder' view of society" (page 84). After defining what he means by the freeholder conception of society (pages 91, 92) the author concludes that, as actually applied in English practice, "it had two lamentable weaknesses."

In the first place, it ignored the fundamental fact about a propertied class, namely, that it is maintained by the labor of others. In the second place, it required of them the fulfilment of no duties or functions in their society; it merely gave them rights, and their rights, like those of other men, were their own, to be enjoyed for their own particular advantage or pleasure [page 93].

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This sweeping denial that the British freeholders performed any worthwhile economic function whatsoever, is modified only by the admission that they did perform very important functions in their society; they governed it both locally and nationally" (page 93). It is hard to believe that such a Tolstoian view of property was held at that time.

The best part of the essay is the chapter on the "Inheritance of the Long Parliament," which rapidly and succinctly lays down the foundation of the subsequent development of taxation in England. The revenue system which the Long Parliament inherited consisted of three parts: (1) the proprietary revenue from crown lands and feudal rights, which was not a tax revenue at all; (2) the customs duties or tolls for the "keeping of the sea," which were not regarded as national revenues; and (3) certain direct taxes levied for special purposes, such as war. The gradual change of the customs duties from tolls to taxes, the absorption therein of the foreign excise, and the modification of the duties by trade policy are well set forth. So, too, is the growth of the excise from 1640 to 1713 (the Treaty of Utrecht). The reviewer does not recall having read so clear or so well supported an outline of the various conflicting views as to the nature of excise taxes, their incidence and the propriety of their different forms. The only criticism to be suggested is that the pressure of fiscal necessity is given less emphasis than it deserves.

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In beginning the discussion as to direct taxes, the essayist plunges valiantly into the controversy as to whether the "fifteenth and tenth" and the " subsidy" were "property taxes", produce and property taxes", or more nearly "income taxes". To this controversy, Dr. Moll has since added fuel in an essay, entitled Zur Geschichte der englischen und amerikanischen Vermögenssteuern. Professor Seligman also has roused himself to reply in the second edition of his Income Tax (page 49). To the reviewer it seems that the point is receiving undue emphasis. But as the tax fell on wheat, barley, oats, oxen, cows, sheep or other produce, and only on a few forms of property, not representative of the year's gains, and as Mr. Kennedy finds good evidence of a continuity of purpose and theory between these taxes and the later taxes, which were in intention income taxes (page 39), it would seem proper to recognize the continuity.

The period from 1713 to 1799 is treated in two parts, the break being made at 1776, both because of the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the outbreak of the American War of Independence. The first period is said to be a time "during which comparatively few changes were made in a stereotyped tax system but during which tax doctrine was gradually welded into something approaching a new orthodox canon (page 95).

The following paragraph gives a summary for the time of Walpole :

In 1732 the three ideas which had most influence on eighteenth century

views on taxation were all represented. They were, first, that every one should pay taxation, including the poor man; second, that the poor man should, if possible, be exempted from taxation on compassionate grounds; and third, that the necessaries of his subsistence should be exempted to prevent high wages and for the benefit of trade [page 111].

The rest of this period is cleverly worked out in a manner to throw light on the sources of Adam Smith's theory of taxation. The other sources consulted and laws studied run very prettily up to the conclusion:

It has sometimes been supposed that the publication of the Wealth of Nations brought to the world a new revelation of the principles of taxation, and that it immediately affected the policy of the Chancellors of the Exchequer. But this is a serious misconception; the only respect in which it bears some relation to the facts is on the subject of trade policy in the Customs. Apart from that, what Adam Smith did was to expand the commercial view of tax questions which we have been following, and to attempt to systematize and rationalize it by bringing it into relation with the distributive theory of the seventeenth century which Walpole expressed. He gave a wider intellectual sanction to a set of opinions already very influential [page 141].

The third period was one in which fiscal necessity overruled every other consideration and yet led to the income tax. The summary is worth quoting:

The nineteenth century opens, therefore, on the one hand, with (1) an Income Tax which was considered in its main features distributively just and yet as a mere temporary expedient for an emergency, (2) much less temporary but "improper" taxes on necessaries which contravened the maxim that the poor should be exempt and whose distributive effect was on that account very little considered, and (3) taxes on luxuries and objects of expenditure other than necessaries, which alone were approved as exempting the poor, distributively equitable and administratively tolerable; and on the other hand, with (1) the doctrine that everyone should pay taxation, overruled, as regards the poor, on compassionate or trading grounds, (2) the rough principle that taxation should be distributed in proportion to income, (3) the theory that this was achieved by the third species of taxes just mentioned, and without the conception of a compensatory system of taxation. In addition, it took over customs duties arranged for purposes of trade policy and spirit duties designed to check consumption as well as to raise revenue [pages 178, 179].

The essay concludes with another chapter on social theory, this time of the eighteenth century. This the reviewer finds as difficult to appre

ciate as the former one. It seems to be entirely colored by the essayist's apparent acceptance of the view that the proprietor performs no economic function. He is fundamentally in error in maintaining that the English freeholder of the past performed only political duties. As a class, the freeholders were not "idle rich consumers," but hardworking directors of industry and enterprise, and as such have maintained their power for generations.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

CARL C. PLEHN.

The Nature and First Principle of Taxation. By ROBERT JONES. Studies in Economics and Political Science, No. 37, of London School of Economics. London, P. S. King and Son,

1914.-xvii, 299 pp.

This book undertakes to refine the definition of a tax, and then to demonstrate that economy is the first principle of taxation. Without much attention to previous attempts to classify public revenues, the author works out, in his first chapter, the following classification (page 29):

Taxes are compulsory payments without guarantee of " measured services."

any definite

Prices are "quantitative payments for proportionally quantitative services."

Quasi-taxes are taxes with a certain additional element of price.

Something is said of "borrowings," lotteries and tribute; the last being classed as a quasi-tax, the others being assigned to the price group (pages 7, 21). There is no evidence that the author has ever undertaken to classify, under these categories, the revenues of any actual government. Perhaps this is too much to expect of an inventor of economic classifications; but if the author ever undertakes it, he will make a number of interesting discoveries.

The second chapter assembles a large number of extracts from the works of ancient and modern writers which enable the reader to trace the development of principles of taxation. The collection is interesting and useful, but Mr. Jones has not always grasped the thought of his writers. Adam Smith, for instance, did not hold that "taxes should on the whole be in proportion to incomes." His first maxim, indeed, looks in that direction; but his subsequent treatment of particular taxes shows that he believed it to be impossible practically to adjust things in that manner, and that he therefore assigned greater weight to his other canons of taxation. On page 153 Mr. Jones

observes that Smith "puts certainty before equity," but without troubling to reconcile this statement with the one on page 100.

The third chapter maintains that economy is the first principle of taxation, and sometimes comes perilously close to contending that it is the last also. Economy is interpreted broadly (page 170 ff.) so as to include the community, the individual and the government; and the principle is taken to mean that taxes should be collected "from those incomes, or parts of incomes, of least utility to the community or to the individual" (page 186). Such parts, thinks the author, are the last increments of income, and he therefore favors progression of the extreme form; "Procrustean taxation," he very properly calls it. Having reached this advanced ground, however, Mr. Jones promptly beats a retreat, as Professor Edgeworth and others have done before him when they have contemplated the ultimate effects of fiscal Procusteanism (pages 195, 213 ff.).

Mr. Jones has a poor opinion of most of the common maxims of taxation. Productivity is a barren principle; justice is of less moment than economy, and hardly concerns the economist anyhow; certainty and convenience may be good enough in their way, but neither can be a first principle. If this is to be had, we are bound to award primacy to economy. Such is the argument of the book. Detailed criticism is hardly necessary. Even Mr. Jones finally arrives at a "deeper" principle than economy-" general utility" (page 222); and the economist who will start with that principle, and wrestle with practical problems of taxation, will pretty certainly find that all of the maxims have weight, and that he cannot assign to any one of them unquestioned primacy in all cases. As Smith knew, and Wagner and Bastable have well emphasized, the duty of the financier is to "combine rightly the different elements" that enter into tax problems. Even Mr. Jones has got far enough into the subject to see that the principle of economy must be limited by various "expediencies," one of which is the need of ensuring "the smooth working of the machinery of taxation" by considering the convenience of taxpayers, the danger of evasion, and adequacy and elasticity of revenue (page 214).

A word should be said about the interesting preface contributed by Mr. Sidney Webb. This suggests that it is "time that some one made a stand for the positive advantages of taxation." In his view there are few taxes, if any, in the United Kingdom that would be "worth abolishing, even if their revenue were not required." He is of the opinion that the public revenues are upon the whole better spent than private revenues, and that to reduce taxation would be to encourage