So the absolute regime of eighteenth-century France recognized
this responsibility when Louis XVI undertook to remedy the abuse of
unequal taxation, for the maintenance of the highways, by abolishing the
corvee.
Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the application, by
science, of steam to locomotion, made railways a favorite speculation.
Forthwith, private capital acquired these highways, and because of the
inelasticity of the old law, treated them as ordinary chattels, to be
administered for the profit of the owner exclusively. It is true that
railway companies posed as public agents when demanding the power to
take private property; but when it came to charging for use of their
ways, they claimed to be only private carriers, authorized to bargain as
they pleased. Indeed, it grew to be considered a mark of efficient
railroad management to extract the largest revenue possible from the
people, along the lines of least resistance; that is, by taxing most
heavily those individuals and localities which could least resist. And
the claim by the railroads that they might do this as a matter of right
was long upheld by the courts,[2] nor have the judges even yet, after a
generation of revolt and of legislation, altogether abandoned this
doctrine.
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