The total amount of taxable property in the State at the close of 1871 was $250,594,417.50 from which $4,605,475.02 in taxes was collected.[330] With this should be compared the valuation and taxes in 1870 to show the decrease. The valuation was the same--$251,296,017.02,--but the taxes collected were $6,490,028.[331] The unpaid taxes amounted in 1871 to nearly five millions, exclusive of the taxes due for 1870 and of the taxes in a number of parishes where no rolls of assessment had been made.[332] The aggregate tax in the State was fourteen and one-half mills on the dollar.[333] So great was the burden of this taxation that in some parishes whole forty-acre tracts of land, as rich as any in the Nile, were sold that year by the tax-gatherer for one dollar, and in many instances estates absolutely found no bidders. Large owners were willing to give half their acres to immigrant families on the sole condition that they should settle on and improve the land given them. A company was being formed in northern Louisiana to divide 50,000 acres of land in tracts of fifty acres to a family. Real estate declined within the years 1870-1 not less than twenty-five per cent.[334] What was formerly considered very good security, mortgage paper for instance, had become of little value, because in a few years at that rate of taxation no one could pass the papers, for in case of foreclosure the property bore with it the burden of five, six, or seven per cent taxes which would leave no revenue.[335] The picture of the financial state drawn by a distinguished Democrat about this time is worthy of quotation. If we were threatened with the continuance of the power which has administered this government, the conflagration of Chicago would not be more desolating than the effect of the continuance of this legislation would be upon the city of New Orleans; and the reason of it is this: when the city of Chicago was burned to the ground the people had at least the ground left, and northern and eastern capitalists have come there to rebuild it, while with us, capital is flying from the state, commerce is decreasing, and everybody who can is trying to get away.[336] The cost of collecting the tax was excessive. Ten per cent of the amount was allowed for assessment and collection in all but portions of New Orleans where five per cent was deducted. The mere cost to the State of gathering in the taxes in 1871 was close to $500,000 out of a total of $6,500,000.[337] This made the cost of collection over twelve per cent.[338] The poll-tax in the second district of New Orleans for 10,146 persons amounted to but $1911, and of this sum, after the cost of assessment and collection was deducted, only $800.85 was left to the treasury.[339]