sand dollars. It was noted that their continuance had the undesirable effect of increasing the number of marriages by irresponsible persons, and in a manner devoid of all solemnity. The rates imposed in England as late as 1706 on bachelors and widowers contracting marriage varied according to the class in life to which they belonged; from thirty pounds to twenty-five pounds on the elder sons of the higher orders of nobility to twelve shillings on persons possessed of an income of fifty pounds per annum.
Within a very recent period a petition, numerously signed, has been presented to the French Chamber of Deputies asking that a special tax on bachelors be established in France, and recalls the fact that the French revolutionary Convention of 1789, and some of the old republics, established such a tax. The petition further stated that the number of bachelors in Paris is nearly half a million, while the number of married men is not more than 379,000; and "that such a tax ought to be doubly welcome in France: first, because it will increase the declining population of the state by inducing bachelors to marry; and, secondly, because it will help to make up a growing deficiency in the national budget." In Switzerland, in the assessment of an income tax and taxes on dwelling houses, certain deductions allowed to married persons with families, are not allowed to bachelors or childless married people.
Legislation looking to the taxation of bachelors has also been seriously proposed of late in several of the States of the Federal Union. In Illinois, for example, a bill has been introduced in its Legislature imposing a uniform tax on all single men, sound in mind and body, above thirty-two years, who are not able to show that they have proposed marriage three times and been rejected. The proceeds of the tax are to go toward establishing a home for worthy and indigent single women above the age of thirty-eight.
A Missouri bill makes the tax progressive, increasing by successive increments as the bachelor persists in his state of single blessedness.
In modern times (1848) an English Governor of Ceylon—Lord Torrington—undertook to repeat the experience of his country-men of near five centuries before, by imposing a poll tax of three shillings per annum, or one week's labor, valued at three shillings, from every man, rich or poor, in the colony. This exaction, in point of inequality, was worse than the poll tax of Wat Tyler's time, inasmuch as it made the average income of the poorest laborer the standard according to which the rate of taxation was to be established for all. There was also another curious feature connected with this experience. The Cingalese priesthood were held liable to pay this tax, either in money or a week's work, when their religion required that they must neither perform
