The Mercantile System and its Historical Significance [14]
initiative of the court is not to be undervalued. Where thrifty princes, carrying on a paternal rule, duly regulated and extended the official body (as in Saxony the Elector Augustus, in Brandenburg the Margrave John), this activity was of no slight importance for the welfare of the land, and the consolidation of its economic forces. Many of the princes of the time were interested in technical improvements and inventions, had their own laboratories and alchemists, sought to establish mines, and erected mills, glassworks, and saltworks; here and there magnificent castles and fortresses were built with the aid of Italian architects and foreign artists and artisans. This put the household of the prince and the service of the prince, with its increasing number of officials, in the centre of the economic life of the territory more distinctly that it had ever been before, and left behind a distinct influence for generations. Thus the Margrave Hans, in his will, prides himself not unjustly upon the fact that during his reign both the country and the people had waxed great, and that they had never stood so high before in revenue and resources. As to territorial taxes and their development, so little of the material for the history of taxation in the several states has been worked through, up to the present, that a clear and complete survey is still hardly possible.(29*) Nevertheless, this much is already clear that the construction of municipal systems of taxation, which belongs to the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, was followed by a period wherein territorial systems were constructed; that the protracted struggles by which a system of direct and indirect territorial taxes was created belong chiefly to the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century; that these new systems in part abolished, in part profoundly modified, the old municipal systems; and, finally, that they created links and bonds of union between town and country, between circle and circle, and between the various districts of the same state, such as fundamentally affected economic life. To begin with, it could not fail to exert a very great influence, that the Estates met together in periodical assemblies, that they became accustomed, in granting the taxes, to look upon the country and its well-being as a whole, and to distribute, alter, or create taxes with that in their minds. The same must be said of the inspection of the whole land by commissioners of the Estates, for the purpose of preparing an assessment which should deal with property everywhere on common principles. And, finally, it is significant that in the great struggle for freedom of taxation, regard was paid to all other contributions by the privileged classes, in person or in purse, to the needs of the country. In no other field of political life was the principle so often invoked that the subjects were to regard themselves as membra unius Capitis, as in relation to taxation and to the other contributions demanded from subjects in natura. In the towns the development would seem to have followed some such course as this: that the thirteenth century was mainly marked by the devising of the direct property tax; that thereupon in the beginning of the fourteenth century Umgelder and other indirect taxes came to the front; once more to be rivalled, during the course of the fourteenth century, by the increased prominence of the property tax. Much the same, I cannot help thinking, must have been the line of territorial development. To the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries belongs the struggle for the definite establishment of the Landbeden, the Landschosse, and other property taxes, based on yardlands (Hufen), number of cattle, houselots, and property valuation. These were constantly being tried in a rough-and-ready way in imitation of the older town taxes, without any great result. Fixed and regular contributions, paid annually but of very small amount, appear side by side with heavier subsidies granted every two or three years or so, for some particular time of stress