If Niccolò Valori is to be believed, no new taxes were imposed in 1480. But an examination of the proceedings of the board of taxation shows how little this statement is to be relied on. The progressive scale of 1447, which originally produced the large sums laid out in supporting Francesco Sforza, and which was to be in operation for three years only, the tax being collected in small instalments as need arose, had remained in force during the remaining years of Cosimo, and with some modifications under Piero and his son. According to a calculation of the payments in 1471-1480, the sum total amounted to 1,682,888, or on an average 168,288 gold florins annually. In 1479 the tax had risen to 367,450 gold florins. The new law issued by the new finance committee on May 18, 1480, and modified on the following January 30, introduced a double progressive duty in place of the former one. The first, fixed for seven years, was on immovable property, so that the lowest class, with an income extending beyond the actual necessaries of life but under fifty gold florins, was to pay seven per cent., and the highest, having an income of 400 and over, twenty-two per cent. The second was a personal tax, which, according to the same scale, amounted to one gold florin and four-twentieths for the lowest class, four florins and four-twentieths for the highest. This mode of taxation, whereby a quota of the national debt could be discharged, lasted with some changes till Lorenzo’s death; its real aim being to keep the lower orders in good humour and weaken the great families; while those that governed always found means to indemnify themselves and their friends, so that equality of taxation was merely apparent. The taxes were collected according to the needs of the Government. More than once they were paid seven times in the year. The proceeds at one collection of the first of these taxes had been estimated at about 30,000 gold florins, but only yielded 25,000; in 1487 it fell to 18,000; and in the following year to 15,000. From 1481 to 1492 the sum of the tax payments amounted to 1,561,836 gold florins, or, on an average, 130,153. The largest revenue was that of the year 1483—that of the Ferrara war—viz. 164,665, and the smallest those of the years of peace, from 1489 to 1492, viz. 105,000. Under Lorenzo’s son the total annual amount was reduced to 90,000. On calculating the various duties on both movable and immovable property, appearing under manifold names, ever changing with circumstances, alternately rising and falling, it becomes evident that the direct tax, which by the old financial system of the Republic was limited to 25,000 or 30,000 gold florins, a light weight in the balance against the duties estimated at 250,000 to 300,000, had increased twelvefold in Lorenzo’s time. The taxpayers were indeed registered at the Monte, and might discharge part of their payments in its bonds. But the Monte more than once stopped paying interest altogether, often paid