slave imported into the Territory, a tax containing the germs of the privilege license system. The schedule was further strengthened by a tax of $1.25 on every pleasurable carriage. It was provided that assessing and collecting officers were to be appointed by the Governor, rather than by the County Court, as heretofore--a change probably due to the differentiation between commonwealth and county taxation. We may, for the lack of a better designation, call the period from 1817, the date of Mississippi's admission into the Union, to the outbreak of the Civil War, the period of ante-bellum Statehood. Such a division in fiscal history would seem to be perfectly artificial, yet it is justified by the fact that during this period the tax system of the State underwent substantial change. The increased expenses of State administration, an accumulation of State indebtedness, minuter differentiation in industry, giving rise to more numerous classes of wealth and progress in democratic thought--all demanded an extension of the State's fiscal system. Personal property became as important an object of taxation as real property. The personal property list was no longer limited to slaves, pleasure carriages, moneys arising from the sale of merchandise, and bank stock, but also included gold and silver plate, pianos, weapons, watches or clocks, cattle in excess of twenty head, saddle and carriage horses, merchants' and brokers' capital and money loaned at interest.[68] This taxation of personal property, usually rated, was supplemented by the privilege license system, with charges partly rated and partly apportioned. Thus, in 1857 auctioneers and peddlers were taxed 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; saloon-keepers, one-fourth of one per cent. on all sales of vinous and spirituous liquors by the gallon; trading in slaves, horses and mules, 3 per cent. on the amount of their sales; keepers of ferries, toll bridges or turnpikes, one-fourth of one per cent. on all receipts; circuses $25 for each day's performance; nine-pin alleys or any like contrivance, $25 each; theatres or places for theatrical performances, $35 each. Even the poll tax was widened into its application so as to include free negro as well as free white males between the ages of twenty-one and fifty years. Contemporaneously with this external expansion, the tax system of the State underwent internal changes. Land classifications were abolished, and annual income was rejected as a device of valuation.[69] A method was substituted which is in vogue today, viz: Assessment according to intrinsic value, to be determined by the owner or person in charge on oath, taking into consideration improvements, proximity to navigation, towns, cities, villages or roads, and any other circumstances that may tend to enhance value. The distinction between commonwealth and county taxes was preserved, but not in the same form as the older distinction between territorial and county taxes.