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In practice the tax-collectors often took as much as they could get. and a shrewd peasant would let his house go to pieces and pretend to be utterly destitute in order that the assessors might not increase the valuation of his property. The other direct taxes were the poll tax, i.e., a certain sum which everybody alike must pay, and the income tax, usually a twentieth part of the income.
With eyes fixed and ears sharpened by such terror as only the sin-steeped soul can know, they saw the waxen eyelids of the mummy slowly rise, the dim, glazed eyes look out from underneath them, the dry, black lips move, and heard a thin, harsh voice say through the awful silence: "Greeting, Nitocris, my Queen greeting from the gloom of Amenthes, where I have waited too long for those who ere now should have stood with me in the Halls of Doom and the presence of the Assessors!
A loans B $1000. May A be taxed for the $1000? Why? May B be taxed for the $1000? Why? Is it right to tax both for $1000? Suppose B with the money buys goods of C. Is it right to tax the three for $1000 each? A taxpayer worth $100,000 in personal property makes no return to the assessors. In their ignorance the assessors tax him for $50,000 only, and the tax is paid without question.
The amount involved, it was true, was not very burdensome, the gipsy's valuation being admitted by local assessors to be approximately correct.
He occasionally cautioned the judges of the court of recovery to beware of being too ready to admit claims for freedom brought before them. He set a mark of infamy upon judges who were convicted of taking bribes, as well as upon their assessors. He likewise instigated the tribunes of the people to prosecute a corrupt aedile for extortion, and to desire the senate to appoint judges for his trial.
I suppose there may be judicial magistrates of New York, executive officers, assessors, supervisors, justices of the peace, and constables before me. Allow me to say, Gentlemen, that there is not, that there cannot be, any one of these officers in this assemblage, or elsewhere, who has not, according to the form of the usual obligation, bound himself by a solemn oath to support the Constitution.
The inn was full already of assessors and their victims. The assessors had descended on the spot, it seemed, and the whole country-side had come to town to lie about the value of its land. I only wished the inhabitants might have chosen some other time for false swearing. For it was a sad tax on my credulity.
Cases were decided on their merits, in accordance with local custom, by a body of jurymen chosen from among the freemen of the district, to whom the presiding functionaries, most of whom were also of popular selection, were little more than assessors. The technicalities of a cut-and-dried system were unknown.
There were Florentine assessors at this new trial, and those words of twofold retraction had soon spread. They filled Romola with dismayed uncertainty. "But," it flashed across her "there will come a moment when he may speak.
On several points Jeanne requested that she might be allowed to give an answer on Saturday, and accordingly, on Saturday, the last day of March, Easter Eve, she was visited in prison by the Bishop and seven or eight assessors. She was then asked if she would submit to the judgment of the Church on earth all that she had done and said, specially in things that concerned her trial.
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