should afterwards look back to the good old days when tiiey had been so lightly burdened.
II. Under the mowirchi/, hs centralized government and greater magnificence involved, of course, a larger expenditure, and therefore a heavier taxation. This mav have come, during the long history of the king- dom, in many different forms, according to the financial necessities of the times. The chief burdens appear to have been (I) a tithe of the produce both of the soil and of live-stock, making, together with the ecclesiasti- cal titlie, twenty per cent, on incomes of this nature (1 Sam. viii, 15, 17); (2) forced military service for a month every year (ver. 12; 1 Kings ix, 22; 1 Chron. xxvii, 1); (3) gifts to the king, theoretically free, like the old benevolences of English taxation, but expected as a thing of course at the commencement of a reign (I Sam. X, 27) or in time of war (conip. the gifts of Jesse, xvi, 20; xvii, 18). In the case of subject princes the gifts, still made in kind — armor, horses, gohl, silver, etc. — appear to have been regularly assessed (1 Kings x, 25; 2 Chron. ix, 24). Whether this was ever the case with the presents from Israelite subjects must remain uncertain. Besides the foregoing, there were (4) im- port duties, chiefly on the produce of the spice districts of Arabia (1 Kings x, 15) ; (5) the monopoly of certain branches of commerce, as, for example, that of gold (ix, 28; xxii, 48), fine lii>en or byssus from Egypt (x, 28), and horses (ver. 29) ; (6) the appropriation to the king's use of the early crop of hay (Amos vii, 1). This may, however, have been peculiar to the northern kingdom, or occasioned by a special emergency (Ewald, I'roph. ad loc).
It is obvious that burdens such as these, coming upon a people |)reviously unaccustomed to them, must have been almost intolerable. Even under Saul exemption from taxes is looked on as a sufficient reward for great military services (1 Sam. xvii, 25). Under the outward splendor and prosperity of the reign of Solomon there lay the deep discontent of an overtaxed people, and it contributed largely to the revolution that followed. The people complain, not of Solomon's idolatry, but of their taxes ( 1 Kings xii, 4 ). Of all the king's officers he whom they hate most is Adoram, or Adoniram (q. v.), who was "over the tribute" (ver. 18). At times, too, in the history of both the kingdoms, there were special burdens. A tribute of fifty shekels a head had to be paid by Menahem to the Assyrian king (2 Kings xv, 20), and under his successor, Hoshea, this assumed the form of an annual tribute (xvii. 4; amount not stated). After the defeat of Josiah by Pharaoh-Necho, in like manner, a heavy income-tax had to be imposed on the kingdom of ,Iudah to pay the tribute demanded by Egypt (xxiii, 35), and the change of masters conse- quent on the battle of Carchemish brought in this re- spect no improvement (.Josephus, A nt. x, 9, 1-3).
III. Under the Persian empire, the taxes paid by the .Tews were, in their broad outlines, the same in kind as those of other subject races. The financial system which gained for Darius Hystaspis the name of the "shop- keeper king" (/c«7r(;\ocj Herod, iii, 89) involved the payment by each satrap of a fixed sum as the tribute due from his province (ibid.), and placed him accord- ingly in the position of a puMicanus, or farmer of the reveinie, exposed to all the temptation to extortion and tyramiy inseparable from such a system. Here, ac- cordingly, we get glimpses of taxes of many kinds. In JudiBa, as in other provinces, tlie inhaliitants had to provide in kind for the maintenance of the governor's household (comp. the case of Themistocles, Thucyd. i, 138, and Herod, i, 192; ii, 98), besides a money-payment of forty shekels a day (Neh. v, 14, 15). In Ezra iv, 13, 20 ; vii, 24, we get a formal eimmeration of the three great branches of the revenue. 1, The niT2, fixed, measured payment, probably direct taxation (Grotiiis). 2. lis, the excise, or octroi, on articles of consumption (Gcsenius, s. v.). 3. T)^^|. probably the toll payable at
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bridges, forcls, or certain stations on the high-road. The influence of Ezra secured fur the whole ecclesiastical or- der, from the priests down to the Netliinim, an immu- nity from all three (Ezra vii, 24); but the luirden pressed heavily on the great body of the people, and they complained bitterly both of this and of the t'lyya- prjiui', or forced service, to which they and their cattle were liable (Neh. is, 37). They were compelled to mortgage their vineyards and fields, borrowing money at twelve per cent., the interest being p.iyable appar- ently either in money or in kind (v, 1-11). Failing payment, the creditors exercised tlie power ( with or without the mitigation of the year of jubilee) of seizing the persons of the debtors and treating them as slaves (ver. 5; comp. 2 Kings iv, 1). Taxation was leading at Jerusalem to precisely the same evils as those which appeared from like causes in the early history of Rome. To this cause may probably be ascribed the incomplete payment of tithes or ofTerings at this period (Neh. xiii, 10, 12; Mai. iii, 8), and the consequent necessity of a special poll-tax of the third part of a shekel for the ser- vices of the Temple (Neh. x, 32). What could be done to mitigate the evil was done by Nehemiah, but the taxes continued, and oppression and injustice no doubt marked the government of the province in a large de- gree. The miseries of an Oriental system of taxation have in modern times received their most revolting il- lustration in the history of Turkey over these .same re- gions, the settled policy of whose government has ever been to grind the people by the utmost extent of extor- tion, peculation, and espionage, in all the grades of offi- cial administration.