A personal tax is known by its affecting the person, not the purse of those who are laid under it. Examples of it are the corvée, in France; the six days labour on the high roads, and the militia service before pay was allowed, in England[[38]].

[38]. The corvée in France is the personal service of all the labouring classes, for carrying on public works. Were they paid for in money, it is computed they would amount to no more than 1 200 000 livres a year. This tax was omitted in the account of the French revenue.

Having thus explained what I mean by proportional, cumulative, and personal taxes, it is proper to observe, that however different they may prove in their effects and consequences, they all agree in this, that they ought to impair the fruits and not the fund; the expences of the person taxed, not the savings; the services, not the persons of those who do them.

This holds true in every denomination of taxes. In former days, when annual tributes of slaves were paid, and even at present among the Turks, where it is customary to recruit the seraglios of great men by such contributions, I consider the young women who are sent, as part of the fruits of the people who send them. This is a fundamental principle in taxation; and therefore public contributions, which necessarily imply a diminution of any capital, cannot properly be ranged under the head of taxes. Thus when the Dutch contributed, not many years ago, the hundredth part of their property towards the service of the state, I cannot properly consider that in the light of a tax: it was indeed a most public spirited contribution, and did more honour to that people, from the fidelity with which it was made, than any thing of the kind ever boasted of by a modern society.

CHAP. II.
Of proportional Taxes, and their proper Object.

Whatever exists for the use of man, so far as it is considered as a fund for taxation, may be classed under the following heads: 1. The produce or fruits of the earth; 2. the produce of the industry of man; or 3. his personal service. Farther,

Fruits cannot be obtained without the necessary labour of man and cattle. As this labour presupposes all the necessary consumption of maintenance, &c. the produce of the land must be understood, with regard to taxes, to be that part of the fruits only which remains after deducting an equivalent for all necessary expences in making the earth produce them. The net produce alone of the earth is to be considered as a fund liable to taxation; and every contribution which bears not a just proportion to that quantity, is wrong imposed, as shall be shewn as we go along.

Again, as to the produce of work: this cannot be brought into existence without some expence, viz. the maintenance of the workman; that is to say, his food, raiment, fire, lodging, and the expence he is at for tools, and every other necessary. This we shall, for the future, call his physical-necessary. The value of the work, over and above an equivalent for these articles, is the only fund to be taxed with regard to the workman.

As to work itself, we have seen above (Book II. chap. 26.) in the general distribution of things which may be purchased with money, how it was ranged under the class of things incorporeal. For that reason, the work performed cannot come under taxation; and therefore the person working, who by work acquires a balance in his favour, is brought to be affected by proportional taxes upon the articles of his consumption; and when it is found that these articles suffer no alienation before they are consumed by him, and consequently escape taxation, then he may either be laid under the cumulative taxes, which will affect his wealth, or under the personal, which are paid in work itself, and in that respect may be considered as the fruit of the man.