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They were not innkeepers, as the word means now; they were a kind of tax-gatherers: but not like ours in England. For first, these taxes were not taken by the Jewish government, but by the Romans heathen foreigners who had conquered them, and kept them down by soldiery quartered in their country.
Doves of Venice Re-cross the Lagunes Padua Wretchedness of Interior Misery of its Inhabitants Splendour of its Churches The Shrine of St Antony His Sermon to a Congregation of Fishes A Restaurant in Padua Reach the Po at Day-break Enter Peter's Patrimony Find the Apostles again become Fishermen and Tax-Gatherers Arrest Liberty.
They laid their hands upon all movables and the finest parts of the estates, but set apart such lands as were burdened with grievous imposts, and, under pretence of kindness, restored them to their former possessors. So these people, oppressed by the tax-gatherers, and tormented by the never-ceasing interest to be paid upon their debts, became weary of their lives.
"Hush!" said a third "hush: it may be unsafe to speak; there are spies about; for my part, I think it was all the fault of the /noblesse/." "And the Favourites!" cried a soldier, fiercely. "And the Harlots!" cried a hag of eighty. "And the Priests!" muttered the Huguenot. "And the Tax-gatherers!" added the lean Catholic. We rode slowly on. My comrade was evidently and powerfully affected.
The chiefs as well as their underlings are called publicans in our New Testament, although the name strictly applies only to the chiefs. These tax-gatherers, small and great, were everywhere despised and execrated, because, in addition to their subserviency to a hated government, they had a reputation, usually deserved, for all sorts of extortion.
By the aid of Marina and Aguilar, Cortes speedily learned of places like Cempoalla, which were hostile to Montezuma and he took in as many of these places on his march as possible, always with incidents instructive and valuable. At Cempoalla, for instance, he met the tax-gatherers of Montezuma.
What was the name of the priest he knew not, nor did the villagers, but he went by the name of Jack Straw, and was, Edgar thought, a dangerous fellow. The lad had no objection to his abuse of the tax-gatherers, or to his complaints of the extravagance of the court, but this man's denunciation of the monks and clergy at once shocked and angered him.
The taxes are now always collected for the government directly by officers who have to pay over not a fixed sum, but simply what they collect. Thus the tax-gatherers are, in some sense, impartial, since, if they collect more than the law entitles them to demand, the benefit inures almost wholly to the government, they themselves gaining little or no advantage by their extortion.
A married woman treats us as the citizens of a constitutional monarchy treat their king; every measure has been taken to give these citizens a life of prosperity in a prosperous country; the government has taken all the pains in the world with its gendarmes, its churches, its ministry and all the paraphernalia of its military forces, to prevent the people from dying of hunger, to light the cities by gas at the expense of the citizens, to give warmth to every one by means of the sun which shines at the forty-fifth degree of latitude, and to forbid every one, excepting the tax-gatherers, to ask for money; it has labored hard to give to all the main roads a more or less substantial pavement but none of these advantages of our fair Utopia is appreciated!
Abdul-Kereem Pasha, the Governor, took a fancy to him, and made him chief of the tax-gatherers; in three years he gained the rank of Pasha and £60,000 meaning 5000 ruined homes, several million strokes of the bastinado, rapine, robbery, and men driven to exasperation, and shot down at their doors."
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