mitted the several States that were parties thereto to interfere with their mutual trade and commerce by multiple and conflicting systems of taxation, was one of the principal factors that led to the formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution.
It is also now generally admitted that to the cruel and extraordinary abuse of the power of taxation, more than to any other one agency, is attributable not only the French Revolution, but the extraordinary ferocity with which it was conducted.
No text in the New Testament has been so little understood for want of any recognition of its connection with the subject of taxation, as that one which declares that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." By many theologians and secular advocates of social reform—the Russian Tolstoi being a recent notable example of the latter it has been regarded as a disapproval of the attainment or accumulation of wealth, and has doubtless served as the basis for innumerable sermons on the "sin of riches;" when a little reflection and acquaintance with social economy would have led to the conclusion, as Buckle has clearly expressed it, "that of all the results which are produced among a people by their climate, food, and soil the accumulation of wealth is the most important. For, although the progress of knowledge eventually accelerates the increase of wealth, it is nevertheless certain that in the first formation of society, wealth must accumulate before knowledge can begin, because without wealth there can be no taste or leisure for that acquisition of knowledge on which the progress of civilization depends." And surely a disapproval of this almost self-evident truth could not have been the intent of an inspired teacher. To understand the true meaning of this text it is necessary to go back and consider the time and circumstances under which the declaration it embodies was made. Judea at this period was a subjugated Roman province, and what the wisest and best men of Rome thought of the people of such provinces and of the right of Rome to grind down the nations that it had subjugated, is clearly shown by the following extract from the oration of Cicero against Verres, who was prosecuted for extortion when governor of the province of Sicily: "If," he said, "we have esteemed the revenues of the provinces as the nerves of the republic, we shall not hesitate to say that the order which raises them is the mainstay of the other orders. The provinces and countries subject to tribute are the lands of the Roman people. If Verres is guilty, it is not because of his rapacious exactions, but because he diverted them to his own use rather than to that of the republic." And as for the sufferings of the tributary people, he alludes to them for the necessities of his cause, but he regards them of so little importance that in his oration for Fonteius he
