charged, there
remained 25,000 liable to the tribute. See Mem. quoted above.--M.]

[Footnote 186: Eumenius in Panegyr Vet. viii. 11.]

[Footnote 187: L'Abbe du Bos, Hist. Critique de la M. F. tom. i. p. 121]

But this tax, or capitation, on the proprietors of land, would have
suffered a rich and numerous class of free citizens to escape. With
the view of sharing that species of wealth which is derived from art or
labor, and which exists in money or in merchandise, the emperors imposed
a distinct and personal tribute on the trading part of their subjects.
[188] Some exemptions, very strictly confined both in time and place,
were allowed to the proprietors who disposed of the produce of their own
estates. Some indulgence was granted to the profession of the liberal
arts: but every other branch of commercial industry was affected by the
severity of the law. The honorable merchant of Alexandria, who imported
the gems and spices of India for the use of the western world; the
usurer, who derived from the interest of money a silent and ignominious
profit; the ingenious manufacturer, the diligent mechanic, and even the
most obscure retailer of a sequestered village, were obliged to admit
the officers of the revenue into the partnership of their gain; and the
sovereign of the Roman empire, who tolerated the profession, consented
to share the infamous salary, of public prostitutes. [188a] As this
general tax upon industry was collected every fourth year, it was styled
the Lustral Contribution: and the historian Zosimus [189] laments that
the approach of the fatal period was announced by the tears and terrors
of the citizens, who were often compelled by the impending scourge to
embrace the most abhorred and unnatural methods of procuring the sum at
which their property had been assessed. The testimony of Zosimus cannot
indeed be justified from the charge of passion and prejudice; but, from
the nature of this tribute it seems reasonable to conclude, that it was
arbitrary in the distribution, and extremely rigorous in the mode of
collecting. The secret wealth of commerce, and the precarious profits of
art or labor, are susceptible only of a discretionary valuation, which
is seldom disadvantageous to the interest of the treasury; and as
the person of the trader supplies the want of a visible and permanent
security, the payment of the imposition, which, in the case of a land
tax, may be obtained by the seizure of property, can rarely