1695, so as to raise the required sum. All male persons between sixteen and sixty years of age were required to pay a poll tax of one shilling,[85] Indians, negroes and impotent persons excepted, unless they were freemen or had set up a trade or calling in the colony.[86] Any person who should conceal any part of his estate from those appointed to take account was to forfeit one fourth of the amount concealed. Finally an account of the rateable estates was to be brought into the assembly, in order that if any town had been overproportioned the error might be rectified.[87] Though this act was not a general law it seems in its administrative features at least with some slight modifications[88] to have been the basis of the tax system until January 1703-4 when was passed the act which as we have said, is the foundation of the present law, so far as its administrative features are concerned. Its provisions were as follows: Each town on its annual election day was to make choice of "three able, knowing men x x x for Assessors, or Rate-makers, to stand for the year ensuing, who shall be engaged as all other town officers; they, or the major part of them, in each town so chosen, to make and proportion all town rates, and likewise each town's part of all Collony rates". Collection was to be made by the town constables who in case of neglect were to be responsible for the sums entrusted to them for collection.[89] The act was amended from time to time as occasion required. In May 1704 the provision was introduced requiring the rate makers before assessing a tax to give ten days notice to each person to bring in an account of his rateable estate, anyone failing to do so to have no redress for overrating. The rate makers were also empowered to administer an oath to all offering an account of their estates.[90] The system of percentage taxation having been abandoned by the assembly that body endeavored to obtain a satisfactory basis for the apportionment of taxes among the towns by ordering from time to time that each town should send into the assembly an exact estimate of its rateable estate. I have been able to find no trace of these early valuations.[91] Looking at the period after 1695, there is a plainly marked progress both in legislation and administration. Before 1695, no well defined system of taxation had been established by general law, but it was customary for each act assessing a tax, or the amendments to it, to contain the rules for assessment and collection. A practically uniform system doubtless prevailed by custom, but it was not embodied in the law. After 1695, we meet with general laws upon the subject of taxation which gradually result in a recognized legal system. When a tax is ordered reference for the method of assessment and collection is generally made either to some former tax or to a general law, the latter being always the case after 1703-4.