It would also be seen then, that the success of those taxes termed productive, is not to be ascribed to the abilities of the taxator, but to the abilities of the persons taxed, who have taken care to right themselves by so much as the taxator ought to have been afraid of being unjust.
Then also would every one be sensible, that the advance in all the prices could not be only of a 12th part, or 8⅓ per cent. as in the glorious system of a poll-tax established by Divine Justice, but of 25 per cent. neither more nor less than in the system of the land-tax, neither more nor less than in the system of an exclusive tax upon luxury; that consequently wheat, as well as produce of any other sort, as well as labour which gives the whole, would be indebted to the tax for a fifth part of its new nominal value, and that 50s. would be the medium price of wheat;—its necessary price, but not more necessary in that merciless taxation, than in the merciful one laid on the exclusive consumption of the rich:—and this calls for the attention of every individual; nor can it be too often repeated, because then neither hypocrites, nor enthusiasts, nor good men, nor manufacturers, nor farmers, nor proprietors, could any longer deceive themselves or others, on the price of labour; it would be too self-evident that the said price ought to increase with the taxes, and that no one would be injured by that increase.
Then it would also appear, that some people had very good reason to say, that the burden of all taxes, falls one time or another, on the landed property; but who could refuse to admit besides, that I am tolerably founded in insisting, that when taxes have in fine reached every part of the whole, no one part can feel the weight?
The money proprietor, it will be said, the lender alone will be aggrieved; he must lose the fifth part of his usual comforts, he must pay 15 for those articles which he could procure formerly for 12.
I shall confine myself to three answers:
First, Is it not self-evident, that any financiering operation, which reduces from 5 to 4, the interest of a national debt, deprives as well the lender of the fifth part of his comforts, as if the nation had loaded herself with ten millions more, to be paid annually? (such is the present hypothesis.) There stands, therefore, between the two cases no other difference, but the palpable justice and necessity of the one, and I believe we may say, the unsuspected inutility and injustice of the other.
Secondly, We have already seen that the loss of the lender, in all cases, flows essentially from the nature of his capital; that it is inseparable from the advance of prices, whether that advance originates from an accession of wealth, or is produced by taxes, or brought on by monopoly; and that besides, by lending to the State, with the certainty that the State could not pay the interest of the loan without the assistance of an import, he has beforehand submitted to the effects of an impost indispensable to his main object.
Thirdly, If we except a poll-tax, which we should suppose laid by Divine Justice, and which, in the present hypothesis, should wrest from the lender only a twelfth part of his enjoyments, where is the system, which, in the supposition of a tax of ten millions, being now necessary in England, would not deprive him of a fifth part of those enjoyments?—We shall see presently that a compound-tax would perhaps prove still less favourable; but how much has he to dread, in all cases, from the indirect taxation of the monopoly, which it is impossible duly to estimate!