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As its pilgrims are known to be sectaries, they are exposed to great extortions on the road: Saoud exacted a heavy capitation-tax from them, as did Sherif Ghaleb at Mekka, amounting in latter times to thirty sequins per head. Persian hadjys are all persons of property, and no pilgrims suffer so much imposition as they during the whole route.
I was told, that there were about 80,000 Chinese in and about Batavia, who pay a capitation-tax of a dollar each per month for liberty to wear their hair, which is not permitted in their own country ever since the Tartar conquest. There generally come here every year from China, fourteen or sixteen large flat-bottomed junks, of from three to five hundred tons burden.
Supposing, for example, that this has happened in the province of Antique, where the payment of the capitation-tax generally takes place in the unhusked rice, rated at two reals per cavan, and, through the effects of a bad season, this article should rise as high as ten or twelve reals.
A poll or capitation-tax of not less than fifty cents, nor more than a dollar, may, in case of necessity, be laid upon every voter under sixty years of age. Amendments must be proposed by two-thirds majorities of all the members of one legislature, approved by majorities of all the members of the next legislature, and ratified by the electors at the next general election.
The words capitation and capital are from the Latin caput, the head, or poll. Hence a capitation-tax or a poll-tax, is a tax upon each head or person. The next prohibition is, "No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state." Probably no law for taxing exports could be devised which would operate equally upon the interests of the different states.
The paralysing land-tax, collected in kind by irresponsible middlemen, was an inheritance from the Romaic Empire, and though it was now reinforced by the special capitation-tax levied by the sultan on his Christian subjects, the greater efficiency and security of his government probably compensated for the additional charge.
When these resources became exhausted, a capitation-tax was laid, followed by an assessment of one tenth, and the adulteration of the currency. The King cut off the pension-list, sold his plate, and dismissed his servants. Misery and starvation laid waste the realm. At last, the pompous, "stagy" old monarch died, full of infirmities and of humiliations; and the road from the Boulevard to St.
In the first case, the reduction is insufficient for agriculture and the poor; in the second, the capitation-tax still exists, in its enormous disproportion.
The census of the slaves in San Domingo was annually taken upon the capitation-tax which each planter had to pay; thus the children, and negroes above forty-five years of age, escaped counting. But in 1789, Schoelcher says that the census declared five hundred thousand slaves; that is, in twelve years the increase had been two hundred thousand.
Some of them, in addition to these general sources of income, had extorted from former chief Sherifs lucrative sinecures, such as duties on ships, or on certain articles of merchandize; tolls collected at one of the gates of Djidda; the capitation-tax levied upon the Persian pilgrims, &c. &c.
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