In addition to these money taxes there were various other burdens which took the form of more or less arbitrary contributions. Enactments were early passed regulating the prices of all articles, and, in case they could not be otherwise procured, authorizing their seizure at these stated prices to meet various expenditures. It became customary, when troops were to be raised, to require each town to raise a certain number, often a cause of considerable expense, and, as the war went on and paper money and loans failed as sources of state revenue, it was common to hold each town responsible for a certain quantity of clothing or provisions. Payment of some kind was generally provided for, but, owing to the wretched financial conditions of the time, these requirements must have operated to a certain extent as a tax. The long continued presence of the enemy necessitated in addition to the maintenance of an army as large or larger than the states proportion of the continental levies, an almost constant militia service which, though nominally paid for, must have been a severe burden and interfered seriously with industry. Again, in any attempt to estimate the burden of taxation during the Revolution, we must take into consideration not only the impositions above mentioned, which partake more or less of the character of taxation itself, but also the general condition of the colony. The British held possession of the island towns from December, 1776, to October, 1779. These towns were in great part deserted by the sympathizers with the American cause, who, having lost almost all their property, became a burden upon the rest of the state. All the towns situated upon the sea coast or upon the shore of the bay were subject to the incursions of the enemy and were kept in a constant state of alarm, while on one occasion at least arrangements were made for the evacuation of Providence. Commerce was practically destroyed and economic life apparently to a great extent disorganized, giving rise to wide spread suffering from poverty. If we assume the population of the taxable portion of the state for the years 1777-8-9, to be 46,000, the per capita rate of taxation for the period was about $2.71 per annum, and the rate for the years 1780-1-2, on the basis of the population in 1782, was $2.80. The highest rate during the period was in 1780, when it reached $4.08. With the close of the war taxation diminished. In 1783-4-5, it was about $1.35 per capita, and after the issue of paper money in 1786, it gradually sank until in 1789, it amounted to only about 9 cents. Estimating the rateable property in this state, exclusive of the towns in possession of the British, at $10,165,048, the rate of taxation for the three years 1777-1779, would have been 1.22 per cent per annum.