false when they exclude each other. - By realistic politics we understand the politics which proceeds from the real, and not from the imaginary, wants of the people, which correctly estimates the forces and means at hand, carefully calculates friendly and hostile power, and only strives after attainable ends. Only with politics of this kind is success possible. In this sense, able statesmen have always been realistic politicians. We call ideal politics that which is determined and guided by ideas, which strives to develop and perfect the existing situation, and to realize practicable ideals, adapted to the times. The great statesmen of all nations, and of all times, were in this sense ideal politicians also. -When, on the contrary, realistic or ideal politics is understood in a one-sided sense, such politics should be rejected. One-sided, realistic politics is brutal, inasmuch as it relies on brute force, or on the power of money; it is spiritless, because devoid of higher ideas. For such politics only material interests have a value, and selfishness is the mainspring of all its action. Hence it becomes vulgar, immoral, low, inhuman. Machiavellian politics has often been understood and practiced in this sense. But Machiavelli himself, although he complacently recommended realistic means, kept in view an ideal aim, to-wit, the liberation of Italy from a foreign yoke.-The earlier colonial policy of the European mother countries toward their colonies beyond the sea was of this character. It was calculated chiefly to exploit the latter to the advantage of the former. For this reason it finally forfeited the supremacy it had abused. It is not impossible that exclusively realistic politics may be successful. It may make conquests, accumulate treasure, procure enjoyments for rulers, and, under certain circumstances, a rich, luxurious life for the governed. But it extinguishes the nobler instincts of the nation, it prevents the development of the intellectual powers, it suppresses all true freedom. It looks to the animal side of human nature, and neglects the intellectual. - Politics of interest must not be always classed with merely realistic politics, for all politics must take general in the state itself. In subordinate things the | tually complete each other. Both principles are change may be more easily effected. But when the dispute is as to the right to the throne itself, forces appear in the arena which claim for themselves a sovereign position, and are not willing to admit a new law as binding, to which they have not given their assent. In this connection the unfortunate politics of the legitimists appears as the antipode of revolutionary politics. It does not reflect great honor on our age, that the leading statesmen of Europe, at the beginning of the third decade of this century, should have ventured to proclaim legitimist politics as the true politics of Europe.* This policy has every where in the world proved incapable of being executed, and unfortunate wherever it has been carried out by force. It has everywhere been in conflict with the wants of national life, and with the progress of the age. It hampered, but did not develop, the powers of the people, while it vainly squandered its means and labor to attain a goal which ever receded from it. - History, since the year 1830, has shed a flood of light on the impotency of this legitimist policy. It had neither the courage nor the energy to protect the elder line of the Bourbons on the French throne. Neither in Italy nor in Spain was it able permanently to guard the absolutism of the restored kings against the revolution. Its authority, artificially and violently restored, collapsed everywhere as soon as external pressure was removed, and the nations began again to breathe and move freely. It loaded the states under its guardianship with debts, without giving any compensation in return, and it uselessly consumed its own energies. It did not even gain a short respite from the blows of the revolution, which it had momentarily conquered, because it could not prevent hostile tendencies and inclinations from accumulating under cover until another explosion became inevitable. The revolutionary shocks of the year 1848, the European wars for the emancipation and unification of Italy, and for the national organization of the German states, deprived the legitimist policy of all credit. The legitimist powers always succumbed. If the divine guidance of the world be at all visible in the history of the world, the policy of the legiti-national interests into account, and seek to satisfy mists has been condemned in the most unambiguous manner by divine decree. The form of the law, no longer suited to the conditions of the time, fell into dust, and the forces of growing national life were in every instance victorious. Only the statesmen who had cleared their heads of the crotchets of legitimist politics had great and lasting successes, while the politicians who, like modern Don Quixotes, had striven for the cause of legitimacy, everywhere met with defeat. IV. Ideal and Realistic Politics. All politics should be realistic. All politics should be ideal. Both principles are true when they are combined together, and mu * Circular of Prince Metternich, May 12, 1821: Conserver ce qui est légalement établi, tel a dú étre le principe invariable de leur politique (des souverins alliés) le point de départ et l'objet final de tous leurs résolutions." them. But the out-and-out politics of interest, which subordinates everything to material and selfish interests, belongs to this kind, and partakes of the faults of one-sided realistic politics. - Onesided ideal politics is equally false, and more foolish, because attended with less success; because it does not test the ground on which it stands and moves, and hence walks in the dark and falls; it incorrectly estimates actual forces and conditions of power, and is hence defeated; it runs after impracticable and unattainable idols; or, finally, it rushes to its ruin, the victim of obscure feelings. Of this kind is the politics of the phantasy, which imagines conditions that do not exist, and becomes enthusiastic over phantoms. Of this kind, too, is politics of the romanticists, who fell in love with the pictures of medieval life, realistic or the ideal, for the most part, preponderates, yet neither the ideal nor the realistic should be absent from either the nation or the individual. first of all, the politics of interest; yet English politics is not wanting in the ideal, as is proved by the immense influence English ideas of popu lar rights and political freedom have exercised in the world. French politics prefers the ideal, and always advances an idea as its flaming beacon. Napoleon III. boasted that, "Only the French were ready to go to war for an idea!" But, by the side of this idealism, French politics manifests strong features of realism. The French never yet scorned to get in return for their ideal enthusiasm the highest material advantages. This Europe has always been made to feel, whether France happened to be governed by legitimist kings, by revolutionary directors or presidents, or by Napoleonic emperors. During the last centuries the German nation did not succeed in establishing a harmonious union between realistic and ideal politics. It unfortunately vacillated hither and thither, between the realistic pressure of absolute governments, and nebulous, idealistic dreams. Prussian politics was the first to understand how to collect and intensify the bodily reality of the forces of the people, by proposing higher tasks to the nation. The greatest of these, the unification of Germany and the rise of the German empire, are due chiefly to the efforts of Prince Bismarck, whom people, by way of preference, designate as a realistic politician; who, in fact, better than any other living statesman, knows how to estimate and reckon with actual forces, but who, at the same time, is uncommonly fertile in ideal thoughts, and, on the whole, allows himself to be determined by the ideas of a national and masculinely free state organization, adapted to the nature and destinies of the German people; and who, accordingly, is an ideal politician, as well as a realistic one. and who thought, that, by the wave of some magic | Count Cavour. In individuals and nations the wand, they might revive the class differences of the middle ages, their pious clergy and knights, and fill our modern industrial world with monasteries and castles. Germany had different kinds-English politics is predominantly realistic, and, of such romanticists, longing for an imaginary middle age: romantic kings, longing for the revival of the theocratic feudal system, and romantic students, who reveled in visions of the national black, red and gold (the German tricolore before 1866). Both failed in actual politics. But even celebrated statesmen have occasionally fallen into this same error. Thus, imagination had a large share in the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon I.; | and his nephew at Strasburg and Boulogne was carried away by very childish fancies. - The statesman, however, may legitimately work on the imagination of peoples, and hold up to their mental vision pictures of greatness, power and freedom, in order to increase their energy of action. But the statesman should never rely on the imagination; he must beware lest the latter weaken entirely, when brought into contact with stern reality. The politics of feeling is another kind of false ideal politics. In politics, leadership belongs to reason, wisdom and masculinity. When politics allows itself to be guided by passion or excited feeling, by love or hatred, by fear or revenge, it goes dangerously and easily astray, and is certain to be worsted. It is doubtful whether the politics that in the middle ages produced the crusades should be ascribed to the imagination, or to over-excited religious feeling; at all events, it was one-sided and unfortunate politics. Religious wars, with all their ruinous effects, must be ascribed entirely to the politics of feeling. Senseless race hatred, a blot on humanity, a hatred which sometimes exists between kindred nations and tribes, is calculated to mislead the best feelings of a people, and to play a ruinous part in politics. The right course, therefore, is not the separation, but the union, of real and ideal politics. The realistic side forms the basis of rational politics; the ideal side is its guiding star. The former has to do chiefly with the means; the latter, with the ends. It is with politics as with art. The mere naturalist, who faithfully paints stone, wood, woolen or silken stuffs, is no true artist, unless he employs his talent in the service of the beautiful. But the man who draws beautiful lines, and is unfaithful to nature, satisfies us no better. Great artists, like Michael Angelo and Raphael, were both realists and idealists. Shakespeare is the greatest of poets because, in his works, truth to nature is united with the most abundant wealth of thought, in such perfect harmony that the two are bound indissolubly together. But only in the greatest statesmen do we see the personification, so to speak, of such a combination of realistic and ideal politics; as, for instance, in Pericles and Alexander the Great, in Julius Cæsar, in Charlemagne and King Henry I., in Frederick II. of Prussia and Washington, in Lord Chatham and Pitt, in Napoleon I., in Baron von Stein and J. C. BLUNTSCHLI. POLK, James Knox, president of the United States 1845-9, was born in Mecklenburgh county, N. C., Nov. 2, 1795, and died at Nashville, Tenn., June 15, 1849. He was graduated at the university of North Carolina in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1820, and served as congressman (democrat) 1825-39. (See CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF.) He was governor of Tennessee 1839-43, and in 1844 was elected president. (See ELECTORAL VOTES, XV.) For the principal events of his administration see ANNEXATIONS, III.; WARS, V.; WILMOT PROVISO; FREE-SOIL PARTY; INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS; TARIFF. His personal resemblance to Jackson, their general agreement in political feeling, and their neighborhood in birth, life and death, gave him the popular sobriquet of "young hickory."-See Hickman's Life of Polk (1844); Chase's Administration of Polk (1850); Jenkins' Administration of Polk (1851); 3 States man's Manual, 1537; 3 Woodbury's Works; 2 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 737. ALEXANDER JOHNSTON. POLL TAX (Fr., taxe personnelle or capitation; Ger., kopfstener), a tax levied upon each poll or head of population. It is one of the most ancient and universal taxes, being met with in the history of almost every nation, and has survived in many countries to the present day. Although a very unequal tax, in that it takes from each payer a like sum, irrespective of his circumstances, and although it is not in its simplest form an elastic tax, the ease with which it is collected has recommended its adoption. It is a direct tax, and when imposed upon laborers forms a tax upon wages. Adam Smith (book v., chap. ii.) claims that such taxes when collected upon slaves are properly taxes upon the profits of a certain species of stock employed in agriculture. — Aristotle ("Economics") mentions one instance of a tax of two minas imposed upon those who possessed no real property, but it was exceptional, as all direct taxes, whether levied on the soil, trades or persons, were deemed tyrannical unless self-imposed. "The most ignominious imposition was the poll tax, which none but slaves paid to their tyrant, or to his deputy the satrap, or subjugated nations to their conqueror, as, for example, the inhabitants of the provinces to victorious Rome. As the field,' says Tertullian, is of less value when it is subject to a tax, so are the persons of men more despised when they pay a poll tax; for this is an indication of captivity.' He whose person was not free had assuredly to pay a tax upon his head, that it might not be taken from him.” (Boeckh's "Public Economy of the Athenians.") There is some doubt as to whether the capitation or poll taxes levied at Rome were really such, or rather property taxes. An account of them as levied under the empire is to be found in Gibbon. A law of Valens and Valentinian recites that up to that time each man had himself paid a certain capitation tax, but henceforth two and even three might unite to pay this tax; an arrangement that probably resulted from the imposition of other taxes. — Although the Romans collected this tax from the tribes subjugated by them, in France it was after a time abolished. During the reign of John the estates voted a capitation tax, to be levied upon all, without exception, from the members of the royal family to the peasant. It was not, however, until 1695 that the poll tax assumed a definite form, and it then became a graduated tax, twenty-two classes of payers being recognized, with taxes ranging from 2,000 livres to twenty sous, the basis of classification being the estate and rank of the person assessed. (See Taine L'ancien Régime, book v., chap. ii., for the injustice of such a scale.) During the revolution all internal taxes on consumption were abolished, and among new imposts established, was that of three days' labor upon the roads. This could be commuted into a payment of money, the value of the labor being determined by the local administration. This charge passed through various forms, and finally became the tare personnelle of the present day, which is based upon the value of three days' labor. But as the tariff for estimating the money value is the same that was used in the last century, although wages in the meantime have doubled and even tripled, the revenue is small, and much less than it ought to be.-In some countries of Europe, as, for example, Russia and Hungary, the poll taxes appear to have been paid to the landlord, but in the other cases, and they form much the larger number, they have been paid to the government. In the former instances they may be regarded as a sort of rent, but in the latter they are taxes upon wages. In England a poll tax was first levied during the reign of Richard II., and its subsequent history forms quite an important episode in history. In 1377, to meet the demands of the treasury, in addition to the usual taxes and duties, a new charge of a groat a head was imposed, which was intended to reach every person in the realm. In 1379 it was renewed in a somewhat different form, being graduated according to the dignity of the payer. The duke of Lancaster was to pay ten marks, earls £4, barons and baronets £2, and so on down to the lowest ranks, in which every person above the age of sixteen was to pay one groat. The chief result of this impost was the preparation of the poll tax rolls of 1379, one of the most important records of the state of the population of England that was ever drawn up." As a financial measure it proved miserably inadequate, producing in 1379 not more than £22,000, and was in the following year made more severe. This led to the peasant revolt of 1381. Never a popular tax, the feeling against it became stronger each year. "One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid, in this way, a larger share of the burdens of the state; but the chief ground for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the tax gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free laborer, the village smith, the village tiler." (Green.) The constant pressure of taxation, which by the poll tax was felt in its most irritating form in every household, goaded into revolt the oppressed peasants. "Nothing," says Stubbs, in his Constitutional History of England," had helped so much to maintain the national feeling against the papacy as the payment of Peter's pence, the penny from each hearth due for the Romescot. So the poll tax interpreted to the individual, far more intelligibly than any political propaganda, the misdoings of the rulers. The appointment of the chancellor and the treasurer, the misdoings of the court, the mismanagement of the war, became home questions to every one who had his groat to pay." Graduated poll taxes were imposed during the reigns of Henry VIII., Charles I. and II., and lastly in that of William III., when they were abolished. The federal government has the power to impose poll taxes, but only in proportion | each hundred dollars of the assessed value of the to the enumeration or census. (Constitution, art. I., § 9.) This power has never been exercised. The states have, however, assessed them until recent times, but very few do now. The capitation tax was doubtless among the first charges imposed, as the condition of the colonies would tend to show. In the early days of a community there is almost nothing besides visible and tangible property that can be taxed. And as men were more nearly equal in rank and condition, and regarded as being equally protected by the law in the enjoyment of life and property, the poll tax naturally suggested itself as the simplest and most equitable form of taxation. As an example may be mentioned the occurrences of the poll tax in Maryland, as described by a writer in the circular of the Johns Hopkins university. In 1641 a capitation tax was granted by the assembly, in testimony of its gratitude toward Lord Baltimore for his efforts to promote the welfare of the colony. In the act of 1692, establishing the Protestant religion in Maryland, every taxable person was made to pay forty pounds of tobacco yearly for the building of churches and the support of parish ministers. To hinder the growth of papacy, an act was passed in 1704 taxing all Irish servants who came into the colony. The same year a tax was imposed on all imported negroes. In 1717 the proceeds of this latter tax were appropriated toward the public school fund, and for erecting one free school in each county. In 1728 every taxable person was made to present the local authorities with three crows' heads or squirrels' scalps. Poll taxes were at various times levied for special objects, such as the building of almshouses and the construction of highways. The last poll tax in Maryland was levied in 1774, for the purpose of constructing a new road. In fact, from 1641 down to the last year of the proprietary government (1774), a poll tax was collected in this state. In 1860, according to a report made to the New York state legislature, twenty-seven states and territories employed the poll tax. Some of the special features are worthy of notice. Thus, while Alabama taxed both male and female free negroes, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia taxed slaves. In California, Mongolians not engaged in production paid a monthly special poll tax of $2.50, known as the Chinese police tax, and in the same state a special federal war tax was laid on polls. In Nebraska and Utah this impost could be commuted into so many days' labor on the roads, probably on account of a scarcity of ready money. Louisiana appropriated the proceeds exclusively for the support of her free public schools. In Connecticut and Delaware the polls were rated at a certain capital value, which varied from $300 in the former state (it was at one time only $10) to $2,700, which was the highest limit in Delaware. In South Carolina the state constitution provided, that, whenever a tax is laid upon land, a capitation tax of not less than one-fourth of the tax levied upon land taxed shall be imposed upon polls, and the constitution of Virginia contained a somewhat similar provision. There were many exemptions from poll taxes mentioned in the laws, among which were persons attached to the army or navy, or who had been wounded while in the military service of the country; paupers and the insane, the deaf and dumb, the blind and infirm; ministers of the Gospel (Tennessee); persons of color (Wisconsin), and uncivilized American Indians (Nevada). In some states the payment of a poll tax was made a necessary qualification of the voter, as it is in Massachusetts to-day (1883). On the other hand, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Michigan levied no poll taxes; the constitutions of Ohio and Maryland declared them to be grievous and oppressive, and Rhode Island provided by law that "no poll tax could be laid for any purpose," although the constitution allowed the collection of a registry tax, which was in reality a capitation tax. - To take from each payer an equal sum, which is the simplest form of a poll tax, does not necessarily make each man pay an equal tax. On the contrary, such a duty is very unequal in its incidence, as the condition of the payers must vary within wide limits. It would obviously be unequal to levy this tax upon every member of the family, parents and children, because the number of children in a family is no measure of comfort or of ability to pay taxes. Leroy-Beaulieu believes that only males should pay a poll tax, and that it should be joined to political rights. Every man, he says, who possesses and exercises the right of suffrage, ought to pay a direct tax, the rate to depend upon the needs of the local administrations and the exist ing indirect taxes. Among some of the United States, in which the payment of a poll tax is necessary to an exercise of the elective franchise, the door has been opened to abuse and frauds, as it is customary for the party managers to indirectly buy the votes of the delinquent tax payers by settling for them their poll tax dues. The inequality of the capitation tax has frequently been noticed, and in attempting to make it more equal the tendency is to change it into a tax upon income; if not based directly upon the income of each payer or class of payers, it may at least bear a certain relation to it. Where the existence of privileged classes permits such a graduation by rank, it has been resorted to, as in France and England. In Prussia a tax of this description is still levied, the classenstener. The population is divided somewhat arbitrarily into various classes, according to their supposed income, and a tax proportioned to this classification imposed upon each group. Thus, the tax that is paid by each member of one class or group is the same, and is to that extent a poll or capitation tax; but as the tax payers are grouped according to their supposed or determined incomes, it partakes of the character of an income tax. The one or other feature predominates according as the number of groups formed is small or large. The classenstener has proved a very productive tax, but poll taxes as a rule can never be counted upon to furnish a large revenue, and are being superseded by other and more productive taxes. - AUTHORITIES. Leroy Beaulieu, Science des Finances; Levi, and M'Culloch, on Taxation; Report on State Assessment Laws, N. Y., 1863; and the various Manuals of Political Economy. WORTHINGTON C. FORD. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY (IN U. S. HIS TORY). The acquisition of territory from Mexico (see ANNEXATIONS, IV.-VI.) brought with it a most troublesome and dangerous question, the status of slavery therein. Was the new territory to be entirely free? was it to be entirely slave? was it to be equitably divided? or was congress to refrain from interfering in any way, and allow the problem to gradually eliminate its own difficulties? The first proposition, the basis of the free-soil and republican parties successively, is elsewhere treated (see WILMOT PROVISO); the third had comparatively few advocates, for the time had passed when even a Missouri compromise line could settle the difficulty; the second and fourth represent the two opposing influences which, after twelve years of widening, finally split the democratic party in 1860. The second proposition above referred to is primarily untraceable, but its rounded and ultimate completion is certainly due to Calhoun. The argument for it took two directions, which may be briefly stated as follows: 1. The power given to congress by the constitution (article IV., section 3), to " dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory" of the United States, referred only to the territory then held by the United States, in which slavery had already been prohibited. (See ORDINANCE OF 1787.) This meaning was so clear at the time that a separate section was necessary to empower congress to govern the territory thereafter to be acquired for a national capital. Plainly, then, in the cases of Louisiana, Florida, and the Mexican annexations, congress was to govern them, not by virtue of this territorial section of the constitution, but by virtue of the sovereign power by which it had acquired them. But congress was itself the creature of the constitution, and could exercise in the territories no powers prohibited to it by the constitution: it could not erect a state church there; or take away freedom of speech, or trial by jury; or allow any one to be deprived of property without due process of law. If, therefore, it found slave property in any of the territories, it was constitutionally bound to legislate for the protection of this species of property, as well as of others. This was the branch of argument intended for the country in general. Historically it is very strong, as may be better seen in Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case. Logically it is almost as strong, its radically weak point being in the definition of "property." How could congress be said to "find slave property" in the territories? State law or custom might create a property in man, but this could cover only the jurisdiction of the state: the state law or custom of Georgia could no more justify property in slaves in a territory than in the sister state of New York. Slave property could not be justified by territorial law, for the territories were under the sovereign jurisdiction of the United States; nor by that consensus of recognition by all men which justifies the holding of other animate objects as property. It could hold up absolutely no other shield than state law. Was congress to protect every man in the territories in the enjoyment of whatever he might see fit to claim as his property air, sunlight, black men, or even other white men? But the whole argument is no stronger than its weakest part, and must stand or fall with that. 2. As the constitution was a compact between separate and sovereign states, congress, as the joint agent and representative of the states, had no right to so legislate against slave property in the territories as to prevent citizens of slave states from emigrating thither, since that would be a discrimination against such states, and would deprive them of their full and equal right in the territories. This branch is elsewhere considered. (See NATION, III.; STATE SOVEREIGNTY.) In this case it was addressed more directly to the slave states than to the country at large, and it furnishes the connecting link between the theory of state sovereignty and its practical enforcement by secession, when Calhoun's hypothetical casus belli had occurred. In this point of view, Calhoun's resolutions of Feb. 19, 1847, whose language has been used in the statement above, were the ultimatum on which the southern states originally declared war, in 1860. The first enunciation of the fourth proposition is generally found in the Nicholson letter of Cass, Dec. 24, 1847. In this Cass asserts that the principle of the Wilmot proviso "should be kept out of the national legislature, and left to the people of the confederacy in their respective local governments"; and that, as to the territories themselves, the people inhabiting them should be left "to regulate their internal concerns in their own way.' This idea was the essence of "popular sovereignty." Its advocates generally accepted the territorial section of the constitution, above refered to, as applicable, not only to the territory possessed by the United States in 1788, but prospectively to any which might be acquired thereafter. They therefore held that congress might make any "rules and regulations" it might deem proper for the territories, including the Mexican acquisitions; but that, in making these rules and regulations, it was wiser and better for congress to allow the "inchoate state" to shape its own destiny at its own will. Properly, it will be seen, there was nothing in the dogma which could constitutionally prohibit congress from making rules for or against slavery in the territories, if it should so determine, though gradually Douglas and some of its more enthusiastic advocates grew into the belief that popular sovereignty was the constitutional right |