In our own favoured realms millers have their troubles, no doubt, as well as other folk, but at anyrate they are not tormented with a grist-tax; and indeed in these enlightened days we should have thought that such an impost was unknown in all countries claiming to have attained a high degree of civilisation. Mr Edward Herries, C.B., late Her Majesty's Secretary of Legation at Rome, in the course of his elaborate Report on the Financial System of Italy, has, however, shewn us our mistake; and in tracing the history and present position of the tax, he furnishes us with some curious particulars respecting it.

As our readers will doubtless be struck with the anomaly of a powerful government having recourse nowadays to indirect taxation to augment its revenue, it may be well at the outset to cite a brief paragraph from Mr Herries' Report, in order to shew how it happened that the grist-tax came to be reimposed upon the people of Italy.

Towards the close of the year 1865, he writes, M. Sella, then Minister of Finance, having to meet a deficit estimated for 1866 at upwards of two hundred and sixty-one million lire (say ten million four hundred and fifty thousand pounds), and being compelled, he said, to have recourse to indirect taxation for a large increase of revenue, urged upon the Chamber of Deputies the revival of the grist-tax, which he considered as fulfilling more completely than any other new impost that could be found the essential conditions of great productiveness, wide diffusion, and equal pressure on all parts of the kingdom.

The impost seems to have made its first appearance in Sicily, where it was a source of revenue during the Norman period, and there, no one was allowed to carry corn to be ground without first obtaining, after much delay, a permit, for which he had to pay the duty chargeable on the grinding of the corn. The attestation of the officer in charge of the mill was requisite for the removal of the flour, for which a certain route was prescribed, and which was always to be accompanied by the permit. The miller was not even allowed to keep the key of his own mill, and was prohibited from grinding corn between sunset and sunrise. The wants of the population, however, sometimes made it necessary to relax this rule; and in such cases the miller (whose family was never to remain in the mill with him) was securely locked and barred in for the night, without any means of communicating with the outer world, whatever might happen. This treatment, however, was at length seen to be cruel; and permission was granted to any miller exposed to imminent peril from fire, flood, or other calamity, to free himself from nocturnal incarceration by breaking (if he could) through the door, window, or roof. It does not seem to have been foreseen, Mr Herries aptly remarks, that such a gracious concession might be rendered nugatory by the strength of the barriers or the feebleness of the miller!

Up to 1842, the millers themselves were considered as responsible fiscal agents; but after that time, the supervision of every mill was intrusted to an official called a 'weigher' (custode pesatore); but not being usually a very faithful guardian, bribery soon became rampant. In the Ecclesiastical State, where the tax was farmed out to contractors, the mode of its exaction was in many respects similar to that existing in Sicily. By an edict of 1801, which deserves notice as a legislative curiosity, a miller was liable to be sent to the galleys, besides paying a heavy fine, for a variety of offences—such as that of grinding corn not regularly consigned to him in the manner prescribed; of receiving corn or sending out flour at night; and others of similar enormity. In the district of the Agro Romano, all bread had to be stamped; and the absence of the proper stamp exposed the guilty baker to a fine of one hundred scudi and corporal punishment, or even to slavery in the galleys. The inhabitants of this district were only allowed to use bread baked within it, and they might be compelled to declare where they got their bread.

Though the tax was temporarily abolished in its last strongholds in the year 1860, it was subsequently revived, until all the statutes relating to the subject were finally consolidated in 1874. The tax, which must now be paid to the miller at the time of grinding, is charged at the rate of two lire (of about tenpence each) per hundred kilograms on wheat; and one lira on maize, rye, oats, and barley. The miller pays periodically to the collector of taxes a corresponding fixed charge for every hundred revolutions of the millstone, to be ascertained by an instrument called contatore, which is affixed to the shaft at the cost of the government. The amount of this charge is determined for every mill according to the quality and force of the machinery and the mode of grinding. The miller may refuse the rate as first calculated; in which case the revenue authorities have the power to employ an instrument which will record the weight or volume of the corn ground; or of collecting the tax directly by their own officers, or of farming the tax. Should they not think fit to exercise such powers, the rate is determined by experts. The impost, it is perhaps hardly necessary to say, is an eminently unpopular one, and was only consented to under the pressure of extreme necessity.

The great difficulty in the way of the smooth working of the grist-tax was the impossibility of procuring the mechanical means of control contemplated by the law; and in point of fact, when it came into operation no effective instrument was in existence. By the end of August 1871, however, matters had changed, and no fewer than 78,250 registering instruments were supplied, and by 1874 the greater number of these contatori were in active operation. The contatore, however, does not give universal satisfaction; and Mr Herries thinks that what is wanted to remove doubts as to fair treatment, is some instrument capable of recording the weight or the quantity of wheat ground. Best of all would be the abolition of the grist-tax; but in a country where the mass of the people consume no articles of luxury which can be taxed by revenue officers, and also from whom no direct impost could be exacted, the continuation of the grist-tax seems to be an absolute necessity.