USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 3 > Part 19
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"appoint". Here public service was not altogether voluntary, and a system of compulsory duties seems to have been imposed upon the freemen in rotation in lieu of a paid service, which was doubtless diffi- cult because of the difficulty of collecting taxes.
These fragmentary details are all that we now know of the fiscal system of the towns before 1647, but it is not improbable that crude as they seem they sufficed for the needs of a people solely occupied in the simpler forms of agriculture.
A brief outline of the nature of taxation and its development from 1647 until 1710, when the more facile method of raising revenue by the issue of paper money was adopted, will aid in our understanding of the detailed history of the period. The system of eolonial government established at Portsmouth in 1647, though in theory sovereign, because it derived its power directly from the citizens as colonial freemen, was not so in practice, and except on rare oceasions when external danger resulted in a temporary subsidence of local factions, was a prey to what may euphemistically be termed a spirit of localism. This spirit of loealism was illustrated in the administrative phases of state taxation. Until within a few years before 1710 taxes were not assessed at regular or stated intervals or periods, but were in the nature of an extraordinary source of income. They were resorted to only as the current expenses of the colony or town exceeded the current income, and some supplementary income became necessary to pay accrued debts, or they were levied for some special objeet too costly to be paid for in any other way. During this entire period there were but one or two instances of an assessment of so large a sum as to leave any surplus in the treasury which the government might subsequently expend for general purposes. Money was not raised in anticipation of public needs, and indeed during most of the period the length of time given for the collection and assessment of taxes and the semi- annual eleetion of the depnties enabled one session of the legislature to repeal a tax assessment law passed by its predecessor before the law could be enforced.
The Stuarts in England at this time were occupied in their attempts to impose taxes ad libitum by virtue of their sovereign royal authority, but in Rhode Island political thought had not advanced much beyond the stage wherein a tax was conceived of as a voluntary contribution. The theory of no taxation without representation, which is but once removed from the thought of a tax as a voluntary offering, was here carried to its extreme form, which resulted in laws in 1672 that colonial taxes could not be assessed unless repre- sentatives from all the towns were present. The town of Warwick protested against a tax assessed in 1664 because her deputies did not participate in voting it. In Providenee, however, the theory had its most unique illustrations. In 1645 certain non-members of the
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Purchasers' corporation sueeeeded in breaking through the exclusive barriers of that body and obtaining a so-ealled quarter-right in the ownership of the original purchase of land, and when the "quarter- rights men were ealled upon", says Williams, "to do service to town and country, as well as the purchasers, they did so and thereby came to an equal ordering of all town affairs". Thus the political privi- lege, the right of the franchise, accompanied as a matter of course the obligation to do publie serviee. Many years afterward some asserted that the validity of a tax assessment depended upon the individual assent of the taxpayer. When town meetings were held for the pur- pose of levying a rate many absented themselves, deelaring, says Will- iams, that the tax was none of their doing. If in the minds of sueh extremists the sovereignty of the individual transeended the sover- eignty of the state, it is probable that the idea of the state as a sover- eign taxing power, implying in the idea, as Marshall says, that the power to tax is the power to destroy, would have found little aceept- anee in early Rhode Island.
We shall not be far from the truth if we find in this absence of a elear eoneeption of the theory of taxation, and its association with the thought of a free-will gift, a partial explanation at least of the faet that neither the parliamentary charter of 1644 nor the royal eharter of 1663 contains any speeifie referenee to a grant of the right of taxa- tion, as the term is now understood. The power of self-government implied the power of self-taxation, as taxation was understood by those who believed in demoeratie government.1
If then the first three-quarters of a century after Roger Williams laid the foundations of the settlement of Moshassuc were devoted to an experimental stage of loeal and state government, in which religion was divoreed from state, much more was it true that the essential notions of taxation were still in embryo, and that a system of tax machinery developed only as the conception of its voluntary eharaeter gave way to its compulsory eharaeter, and taxes began to be paid to the local officials rather than contributed by a willing member of the community. The great body of local law was transplanted from England, was adapted to loeal needs and was, therefore, nearly eom- plete at the beginning; but the system of taxation and the laws em- bodying it were entirely indigenous produets and were evolved slowly through experienee. Williams, in 1654, writing to Vane of the bless- ings of free government, said, "Sir, we have not known what an exeise means, we have almost forgotten what tythes are ; yea or taxes either to church or commonweale", and he was not far from the literal truth.
1On the other hand the Stuart view of taxation, as an arbitrary assessment imposed by an unlimited sovereign, was expressed in the royal charter in the clause granting the authority to impose mulcts and impositions on the people. The term mulct appears in local writings of the time in the sense of a tax.
12-3
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The details of the form of the first colonial government were the work of the island men. The remarkable code of laws and provisions for the "administration of justice" then adopted werc cast upon the model of the two-town government already established by Portsmouth and Newport, and as in the latter system financial matters had been largely left to the localities and settlement was made by an annual balancing of accounts between the state and town, so in the new colo- nial government some such scheme seems to have been intended though it was never fully worked out. The extreme spirit of localism was not yet ready to vest the tentative central government with authority to receive and pay out all moneys due to and from the state. The "public treasurer" received only "such fines, forfeitures, amerce- ments and taxes as fall upon such as are not within the liberties of the three towns specified in the charter and Warwick". The general sergeant and sheriff seem not to have returned the fines imposed by the general court into the treasury until ordered to do so in 1656 and 1658. The first tax imposed by the colony was a levy of £100 to repay Roger Williams for his trouble in procuring the charter, and although the share of each town was set by the general assembly, the towns through their town councils were to collect the tax and pay it directly to Williams. The treasurer's duties, therefore, were not burdensome, and John Clarke returned "his accompte into the courte for the year 1649, that he [had] received nothing as Treasurer, and therefore have nothing in his hand."
The colonial government's right to levy taxes seems to have been as- sumed by it at the outset, though it used that power but twice during the first seven years of its existence. One of the taxes was in the nature of a free gift and grant to Williams, and was levied by the first general assmbly of the whole people in 1647. In 1650 the gift was "ordered" to be paid by the commissioner's court and penalties attached for de- linquency. The second was a levy for a magazine or powder house in each town, and each town was to make provisions for its own needs. The experimental character of governmental power was very promi- nent during these first years. The commissioners elected after the first meeting in 1647 were called the representative court, but for the first few years they were vested with authority "to act", or arrogated to themselves that power, at the beginning of every legislative session, while the semblance of the referendum, impractical as it proved to be, deprived their doings of the full character of sovereignty. Their requests and orders in regard to taxes were even less regarded by the northern towns than were their other decrees, and in the absence of power to enforce them we may assume that until 1654 the colonial power of taxation was exercised by sufferance. Its decrees had rather the authority of requests than orders. Williams had not been recom-
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pensed by Providence in 1651 and he seems never to have been fully paid. We know nothing of the results of the magazine tax.
The secession of the island towns under William Coddington in 1651 and the reunion of the government in 1654 was followed by some clearer statements of tax powers. Among the earliest laws of the new government in May, 1655, when the freemen from the whole colony seem to have been present, it was enacted "that ye raisinge of Generall Taxes shall be ordered by the General Court of Commissioners, as they shall see cause from time to time as to ye sumes, and how they shall be proportioned on each Towne; as alsoe, who in each Towne shall have power to make ye rates, and who are to give forth warrants for ye gatheringe of them ; as alsoe in case of any refusinge to pay, to order assistance to him or them that are authorized to give warrants, or to gather ye rates as need shall require."
This was the fundamental law of the colony in matters of taxation. In the absence of objection to it, or repeal of it, it had a degree of theoretical sovereignty and constitutionality which cannot now be questioned. It was comprehensive in its provisions and covered both the power to tax and the power to determine the methods of taxation. But like many other statutes of the time it voiced the theories of the island towns rather than those of the mainland, and was never en- forced in its entirety. The question which at once presented itself for solution related not so much to the fundamental right of taxation as to the character of the machinery by which that right could be most effi- ciently exercised. Should the towns be treated as responsible corpo- rate entities, and should the taxes be apportioned on them as such, leaving them to use their local machinery of assessment and collection ; or should the colony erect an independent tax machinery and reach the taxpayer directly without the recognition of the locality or inter- mediation of the town? The central colonial government was the creation of the people, forming a colonial corporation and acting by virtue of their rights as colonial freemen, and had the majority so wished they could have created a strongly centralized government and tax system. That such was not the case was partly the result of a contest between centralization and local autonomy, in which the working out of a duly efficient tax system was associated with the due recognition of the spirit of localism. This adjustment was more than fifty years in process.
The commissioners' court under the statute of 1655 at once levied a tax for colony prisons in Newport and Warwick, and in conformity to the provisions of the law appointed assessors in each town, but the spirit of localism was recognized in a clause allowing the towns to add to or change those appointed by the colony, provided "ye worke be not neglected". The work was, however, neglected, and after three years' delay, during which fines of £10 each were imposed on the towns for
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negligence, the Newport prison was adopted as a colony prison. The building of a prison in Warwick was abandoned and with it was abandoned for many years the attempt of the colony to appoint its own tax officials.
The next taxes, assessed in 1658 and 1659 to pay for powder and shot and the expenses of the colony agent in England, were appor- tioned on the towns, the assessment was left to them and payment was to be made to the town treasurer who was to remit to the colony treasurer.
After the Restoration it became necessary to procure a new charter, and various expedients were resorted to in order to raise the funds for the colonial agent, John Clarke, to whom the matter was entrusted. A voluntary contribution of £200, which was apportioned among the towns, was requested in 1661, but the hope of the legislature that it might thus "be raised with allacrity and cheerfull freeness" was not realized. Only £40 seems to have been contributed, and two men were appointed in each town to see what "moncies" they could "rayse in the several towns", and "old England moneye" was accounted "dou- ble the value of other pay". Country pay or products, in which barter was carried on, was reckoned at about half the value of money or bills of exchange, because of the cost of transportation to England, and New England silver was reckoned at about two-thirds the value of English money.1
A tax of £288 was levied in June of 1662, and the whole was paid by a few men in cach town, they looking to the town for repayment. This method of securing the tax from a few able and well-disposed marks the extreme weakness of the state power of taxation. It was said to have been adopted in this instance because, being levied in early summer, "particular persons cannot pay the rate untill corne be ripe and merchanable, and cattle be fit to kill", and "therefore the persons commissioned in each town saw a necessity for the honor, safety and ease of the collony to engage for the present supply and to stay for the same untill the rate be gathered", but in October of 1663 the money had not all been raised, and although presumably the corn was ripe and the cattle fit to kill, at this season of the year, another tax of £100 was apportioned upon the towns and payment was again volunteered by a few from each locality.
Under the royal charter some improvement was made in methods of taxation. The locally elected town deputy or magistrate was suc- ceeded by the colonially elected assistants, who under the new gov- ernment were both magistrates and members of the town council. The peculiarly important position which these state officials occupied in local affairs gave to the central government an extraordinarily large influence in all local government, and in theory at least until
1Its coinage value was three-fourths that of sterling.
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1729-30, when they and the justices of peace ceased to occupy ex-officio a position in the local town council, the principle of home rule that local officers should be locally elected yielded to the principle of cen- tralization, according to which in some towns local government was practically administered by colonially elected or appointed officials. The assistant or magistrate, therefore, under the new system became the official through whom the colony exercised its tax powers. Hc called town meetings to levy rates proportioned by the colony, he issued the warrants to the general sergeant to distrain the property of delinquents, and when the towns were negligent in appointing asses- sors he had authority to appoint them.
While John Clarke was in England, acting as the colony agent in procuring the charter, he had engaged in preaching and writing in order to eke out his income, and had been compelled to mortgage his property in Newport for £140 in order to pay some of the colony's debts. In 1664 the colony was indebted to him £343 13s. 6d., and to meet this and other charges a tax of £600 was levied. Collections were slow. In 1666 a committee found "very much of the aforesaid levy taken up, withheld or suspended upon other and later accounts", and the assembly enacted that no debt or debts belonging to any other person or persons should be offset against the taxes levied for Mr. Clarke's benefit.
The custom here forbidden was the outgrowth of the practice of using local tax machinery for state purposes. Assessors and collectors had become accustomed to deducting their charges from the tax. The towns themselves deducted charges borne by them in the colony's behalf from the sums paid to the town treasurer, and finally, in the absence of a clear notion of the compulsory character of the tax, indi- viduals deducted not only audited bills but sums due to them for services rendered the colony from their individual assessment. Thus the tax claim of the sovereign state was offset by the claim of a seem- ingly equally sovereign individual. A committee empowered to pro- ceed and collect the tax of 1664 found themselves therefore "obstruct- ed in the premises soe as not to be in a capacity to discharge the trust reposed in them". Another committee, appointed in 1669, of which Clarke himself was a member, recommended that all outstanding accounts be audited and allowed to be deducted from the taxes assessed for his account; but in 1671 the official records contain references to futile efforts to collect, and the executor's of Clarke's estate in 1678 asked for the payment of sums still due. The mortgage on Clarke's home had been meanwhile discharged by voluntary contributions of the state officials.
For the districts lying without the limits of the four original towns various officials had been appointed by the general assembly, and though for each of them special assessors and collectors had usually
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been selected, tax levies had been difficult to enforce. In 1671 for assessing a tax of £250 the state again appointed special officers for the outlying districts and for two of the original towns, Providence and Warwick, but left to Newport and Portsmouth the direction of the. portion of the tax assessed on them. As in 1655, however, the right was reserved to all towns and districts to take action as they saw fit, but if they failed to act within three weeks, then the state appointees were to proceed in the premises. This enactment carried the respon- sibility for the assessment of the tax to extremes. If the towns and districts appointed assessors and they neglected to act, they and their estates became liable for the full amount of the tax. If, however, the towns failed to appoint and the appointces of the Assembly neglected their duty of assessing the tax, their estates were likewise liable for the amount of the tax. This discrimination against Providence and Warwick was doubtless warranted, but it created bitter feeling, and at the April session of the assembly in 1672 the objectionable clause appointing colonial assessors was repealed and the two towns were "only left" to "make choyce" themselves. The assembly seems to have made no subsequent attempt to appoint assessors at the time of levying a tax, and in but one instance did it use that method as a last resort. In May, 1690, a war tax was levied, but in September, "find- ing that Providence, Portsmouth, Warwick, Westerly, Kingston, Jamestown and Greenwich had not proportioned the rate and still neglected and refused to do so", the assembly appointed three men in each delinquent town to levy the rate. "But the Assembly being concerned for the ancient privileges of every town" in the colony, declared that if they would "proceed according to former custom forthwith" it "would be accepted". Otherwise the colonial ap- pointees should act, and for neglect their estates were liable for the tax.
Taxation had, however, become almost an impossibility, and this session of the general assembly made itself famous by passing some remarkable tax laws. It was forbidden thenceforth to convert taxes to other uses than those for which they were levied, and charges against the colony were no longer allowed to be offset against the sums levied on individuals or towns.
Some part of the difficulty of enforcing tax levies in the mainland towns and districts was due to the poverty of the people, and in some cases to uncertainty of land title in the western districts, pending the settlement of the boundary line between Rhode Island and Connecti- cut and uncertainty of town and district jurisdiction for lack of clear lines between them, but the greatest difficulty in most cases was not economic. It lay in the fact that the separation of church from state had retarded education and had blunted the sense of moral and social obligation which is essential to all successful communal effort. In the
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two island towns these effects had not been so noticeable, partly be- cause, as has been noted, the separation of church from state was not complete, their local laws being founded on "the Word of God", partly also because the possession of a fertile soil enabled them to re- tain and increase the considerable amounts of private property which they had brought with them, and such possessions were a potent factor toward the maintenance of a reasonable government, especially among men seemingly prone to a lawful course from the outset. In the two northern towns, and especially in Providence, not only were these factors to stability wanting, but many of the settlers were only too ready to carry their individualistie views to the verge of lawlessness at the slightest provocation. The principles of the Quakers, which for- bade them to bear arms or support military service, which was an important part of the public burdens imposed upon all, added to the forces of discontent. A pending war with the Dutch in 1672 made these forces seem more than usually dangerous, and the Sedition Act was passed in April. "The assembly", so runs the preamble, "being sensible of the great detriment the colony in generall, and well-minded persons in pertickular doth sustain by reason of a covetous or ffactious and mallicious sperritt appeereinge in sundry towns and places in this collony ; who oppose all or any rates, and thereby prevailinge, by their deluded adherants, in overpowering the more prudent and loyall partys in such town and place, to the frustration of the most necessary and needful ends for which such rates are levied; whereby the collony is exposed to much discredit, and other detriments great and danger- ous, even tendinge to ruin and subversion thereof in the issue, and in meantime to the intollerable burden and oppression of the more tract- able and rationall people, who readily comply with the collony's injunctions in paying the several rates imposed on them, which are yet rendered ineffectuall as to the full discharge of the collony's engage- ments, by reason of non-conformance to and non-performance of the collony's orders in such cases by such refractory persons."
The law classed as guilty of high contempt and sedition all who appeared "by word or act in opposition to rates and impositions" or "any acts or orders" of the assembly, and all who spoke against, moved to reject the same in public meetings, or otherwise by word or deed slighted them. The penalty on conviction was thirty stripes or a year's imprisonment or a fine of £20. Something of a political revolu- tion followed the passage of the act. Within a month a general elec- tion was held. Governor Benedict Arnold and Deputy-Governor John Clarke were replaced by Nicholas Easton and John Cranston. Of ten assistants four only were re-elected, one refusing, and Cranston being advanced to the office of deputy-governor. Of the twenty depu- ties none were returned. But too much emphasis should not be laid upon the change in colonial officers, for it had not been customary for
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some years to return the same members to successive assemblies, or to state it more accurately, it had not been eustomary for the deputies to aceept office twice in suecession if they could avoid it. There was a great deal of feeling against the aet, and at an adjourned session, held in the latter part of May, this and indeed every other act of the April session was repealed. In November of the same year, "for the pre- ventinge great and emminant dangers of pretended debts, which by some mens subtilty and others simplicity, this eolony may unjustly and undoubtedly incurr", it was "enacted that noe tax nor rate from heneeforth shall be made, layd or levied on the inhabitants of the eol- lony without the consent of the Deputies present pertaining to the whole collony". In the May session of 1678 this provision was abrogated and the major vote of any legally convened general assembly was de- clared sufficient for thelevying of a tax, but aeeording to the assembly's interpretation of the "intent and meaning" of "the charter", it was also enacted that "noe rate, tax or mulet" should be laid or imposed upon the inhabitants without legal notice by warrant from the gov- ernor to the towns that such a "rate, tax or mulet" was to be assessed. In about one year this law was also repealed as "prejudicial to the carrying on and management of the publiek affaires and weale of this collony". It was ordered "that it shall be lawful for the General Assembly at any time being to assess and impose sueh rates, taxes and mulets on the inhabitants of this eollony as to them now, or at any time in the future shall appear necessary for the maintaining his Majesty's authority". Nevertheless at times thereafter it was not unusual to notify the towns of the pendency of measures imposing a tax, and they were requested to send their deputies with instructions accord- ingly.
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