The difficulty encountered by France in its attempt to determine the net income from land for the purposes of taxation carries an important lesson. Failing to obtain uniformity of appraisement of this net income under the crude method first employed--of basing it on the character of soil and nature of cultivation, deducting the expenses of cultivation--a _cadastre_ was decreed.[53] In this _cadastre_ each particular piece of property was recorded, with its boundaries, its manner of cultivation, and its net rental. Begun in 1807, it was not completed until 1850, and proved of little value, as no provision had been made for recording the changes in cultivation, rentals, or other conditions, except those of ownership, buildings, and exemption from taxes. Instead of proving a successful means to a desired end, it "turned out to be a stupendous disillusionment." "The experience of both the western Prussian provinces and of France showed that the newly constructed _cadastre_ was of considerable service in equalizing the land tax within a relatively small area, but not as a basis for alterations in the contingents to be paid by large and widely separated regions. The officials in charge of the _cadastre_ on the Rhine, as well as those in France, themselves admitted that any computation of net income was uncertain; that the coincidence of the figures obtained by the cadastral computation with the actual net income could never be assured; that the figures afforded by the _cadastre_ were rather of the nature of a proportion, while uniformity of assessment was to be attained rather by observation of the business transacted than by depending on the figures obtained by computation."[54] This effort to discover and record the net income from land was a failure. [Footnote 53: The word _cadastre_ was derived from the Latin _capitastrum_, or register of _capita_, _griga_, or units of territorial taxation into which the Roman provinces were divided for the purposes of _capitatio terrena_, or land tax. It is of modern use and is locally found in Louisiana.] [Footnote 54: Cohn, Science of Finance, p. 477.]