South Carolina, in the act of 1690, provided “that all slaves ... as to the payment of debts shall be deemed and taken as all other goods and chattels, ... and all negroes and slaves shall be accounted as freehold in all other cases whatsoever and descend accordingly”.[802] Middleton, president of the council, consequently declared, in 1725, that negroes were real property, such as houses and lands, in Carolina.[803] Yet they were always returned as personal property in the inventories of intestates.[804] This condition continued until 1740, when it was declared that negroes and Indian slaves should be reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors and their executors, administrators and assigns.[805] Various tax acts were passed from time to time for special reasons, and in some of these Indian slaves, along with negroes, were a part of the basis of taxation, being rated as property without specification as to real or personal, along with goods, lands, cattle and white servants. Such an act was passed in 1703.[806] The act contained the general term “slaves”, which, of course, included Indian slaves by implication. A tax on polls was generally selected by the colonies as the chief source of revenue. In accordance with this idea of taxation North Carolina during the eighteenth century regarded Indian slaves as taxables. In the earliest legislative action of the colony taxables were declared to be every white male aged sixteen years, and every slave, negro, mulatto, or Indian, male or female, aged twelve years.[807] By the act of 1750, furthermore, a taxable was every white man of sixteen years of age, every negro, mulatto or mustee, and every other person of mixed blood to the fourth generation, twelve years of age.[808]