Nothing would be so easy as a general rule for imposing proportional taxes, did the labourers of the ground actually consume a part of the fruits of the earth, and the other industrious classes a part of their own work, in lieu of this physical-necessary. In that case, nothing but what remained of fruits and work, not already consumed by the immediate producers, would come to market for the use of those who do not work; but who have an equivalent to give for it, out of the produce of past industry. Were that, I say, the case, then at the time of alienation (or, as we expressed it in the 26th chapter of the second book, at the time when the balance of wealth is going to turn in favour of the industrious, against the idle consumer) a tax proportional to the value of the alienation might, with the greatest propriety, be imposed, as we shall presently discover.
This, I hope, will recall to mind the principles deduced in the chapter above cited, where we made it appear, how the industrious classes, who furnish consumable commodities for the price of their overplus, must constantly have the balance of wealth turning in their favour: and when once they arrive at a certain degree of ease, proportional to their ambition, then they give over working, and become incorporated into the class of those who have enriched them.
Thus matters go on in a perpetual circle. The industrious become easy, and the public lays the consumers under a perpetual contribution in proportion to their expence.
The hypothesis we have made, is not entirely agreeable to matter of fact; because the operation of taxes is far more complex than we have described it to be; but by simplifying it, as I have done, it serves to give an idea of the result, or general consequence of proportional taxes, which, when properly imposed, do affect the idle only, but never the industrious.
Were, I say, the operation of taxation as simple as we have represented it, nothing would be more easy than to deduce its principles. Nothing would come to be refunded to the labourer or workman, at the sale of his surplus. This surplus would be equal to the whole produce of the earth, and whole industry of the country, deducting the physical-necessary of all the industrious; and this physical-necessary need not then be deducted; because it is supposed to be consumed in the very production of the surplus, as the aqueous part of sea water is consumed before you can have the salt.
This illustrates what has been said, viz. that the fruits of the earth are only to be reckoned to exist, after deducting the necessary expence of providing them. For though in fact a farmer possesses all his crop after harvest, yet part of it, as to him, is virtually consumed out of his own stock, or that of others who have furnished him food and necessaries all the time it was coming forward: consequently, that part neither belongs to the ground, or to the farmer.
If it be urged still, that the whole must be supposed to exist with regard to the state, I agree to the proposition; but according to our argument, it must not be supposed to exist in favour of the state, to the prejudice of the farmer; for this reason, that the total of the farmer’s expence must be understood to have been taken from the surplus of other people’s industry, and therefore if the crop be supposed to exist with respect to the state, because it is in the farmer’s yard, the surplus of industry which he has consumed must not be supposed to exist in favour of the state, at the same time. But as the farmer is supposed to have paid the tax upon what he has borrowed and consumed, he must draw it back from those who, in their turn, are to consume his crop: and if he draws it back, he cannot be said to pay it, although the state profits of it as much as if he did.
Does it not appear from this analysis, that a state can only take gratuitously and proportionally out of the surplus of fruits and industry? Now what is here called surplus, relatively to the industrious, is the necessary fund of consumption for all the rich and idle; consequently, were the state to diminish any part of the quantity, the idle and the rich would be deprived of a sufficiency: but in regard that those who do not work give money, which is the price of all things, in exchange for what they consume, there the state steps in, and says, we ask nothing of those who have nothing but their physical-necessary, this they have been allowed to take; we take none of their surplus from them, this we allow them to sell to you: but as for you, who do not work, and have in your coffers wherewithal to purchase the labours of your industrious brethren, this labour you shall not profit of, unless you give the state a certain value out of your wealth, in proportion to the work and fruit you are going to consume, although you have contributed nothing towards the production of it.
Hence it appears evident, that without money there could be no tax imposed: for were the state to take their proportion of the real surplus, and dispose of it out of the country, a part of the inhabitants would be starved. But by an equivalent’s being found, quite different from the surplus itself, of no use for subsistence, the whole produce of industry is left for the use of those who have it; the state takes what part of the equivalent they please from the idle; and no body starves, but such as have not money, nor industry, nor the talent of exciting the compassion of the charitable.
By this simple representation of a most complicated operation, I have been able to deduce the capital principle of proportional taxation. If the reasoning be found solid, it may be retained; because we shall have occasion to recur to it, at almost every new combination.