levy a tax exclusively for county purposes, which, together
with the state assessment, should not exceed 25 mills on the
dollar. In every county, with half a dozen exceptions, the
limit was reached, and it appears to have been exceeded in
more than thirty instances. This violation of the law does
not seem to have been confined to those counties under
Republican rule, nor does the average county levy appear
to have been much higher in the Republican centres than
in the Democratic centres.

According to the report of the state auditor, thirty-four of
the seventy-three counties of Mississippi had Republican
administrations in 1874, and thirty-nine had Democratic
administrations. From the table on the following page ¹
it will be seen that the highest levy was that of Colfax
(now Clay) County, the rate being 23.2 mills. This, with
the state tax of 14 mills, made the amount nearly 4 per cent.
Those who lived in the villages of that county had to pay,
in addition, a municipal tax. In Warren, the county levy
was only 14 mills, but the municipal levy of 21½ mills in
Vicksburg made the total contributed by the unhappy
citizens of that town equivalent to about 5 per cent. The
showing in the Democratic counties, according to the audi-
tor's report, does not seem to have been much better than in
the Republican counties. If the report of the auditor is a
truthful statement of the situation, the Democratic charge
of Republican extravagance does not seem to have been well
founded.

It will not be seriously denied that a tax levy, ranging from
2½ to 5 per cent on property which had decreased largely in
valuation, was a grievous burden upon a people who had by no
means recovered from the impoverishment of the war, and
who had experienced a succession of droughts, floods, and
bad crops almost unprecedented in the history of the state.
The result was wholesale confiscation of property. The
sheets that were fortunate enough to secure the public print-
ing, contained whole pages of delinquent tax lists. In some
communities, the tax payers decided that it was better to
allow their property to be confiscated, and take the chances
of being able to redeem it in after years. ² Over six million

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