Suppose that after all, there should still remain more taxes than are sufficient for supplying all the necessary charges of government, when administred with prudence and with oeconomy, and that this surplus is bestowed in gratifying individuals, beyond the value of all the services they do the state: I ask whether this superfluous expence is immediately to be cut off, and taxes diminished in proportion; or whether it would not be more proper to let the taxes subsist, and to think of a better method of applying the amount of them?
I answer, that according to the state of the question, the body of the people, who are all made to contribute towards the enriching of a few of their number, may justly complain of the inequality of their condition, and have a title to demand an abolition of their taxes, unless it can evidently be made appear, that by granting their request, there would follow a prejudice to the state, which would affect their own interests as individuals.
To discover how far this may be the case, let us form as many combinations as we can, relative to the effects of diminishing taxes, and candidly examine the most natural consequences of every one. If we find that the mass of a people gain, in general, more than they lose by paying taxes imposed with moderation and propriety, and still more if it appears that their ease and prosperity depend upon the levying and expending of such taxes; I think we may conclude, that all diminutions of them which hurt the interest of the greater body, are in general hurtful to the society.
Let me first suppose a general reform of all unnecessary expence to take place at once, and a proportional abolition of taxes to go hand in hand with it. Would not all those who at present subsist by the superfluous expences of government, be reduced to misery? Would not all those who supply unnecessary wants, equal to the whole amount of the taxes suppressed, be forced to be idle in proportion? The millions who contribute in paying those sums would be differently affected. Those who pay out of a fixed and certain income, would feel an immediate benefit from it; those who contribute by proportional taxes would also be gainers, providing they be of the idle class; but all the industrious would lose in proportion, if the prices of subsistence should not fall with the diminution of their taxes. All the manufacturers of exciseable goods, who had been used to advance the taxes, as we have observed, would gain considerably. For the diminution of the taxes would be total as to them, though not to their customers; because traders would never want pretences for keeping up the price of their commodities beyond the proportion of what it ought to be, when duties are taken off.
I decide with the greater certainty as to this particular, from the analogy it bears to the consequence of changing the denominations of the coins in France, which long experience shews never to have the immediate effect of regulating prices proportionally.
But as we are here considering the consequences of a sudden abolition of taxes, let us, for a moment, consider, with an eye of humanity, the scenes which would unavoidably open to our view, both in the formerly opulent habitations of those who were wont to wallow in public money, and in the comfortable dwellings of many others of every denomination, who, either as the reward of merit, or as the recompence of painful industry, had supplied the wants of useless armies, navies, arsenals, dock-yards, &c. formerly paid out of taxes, now abolished, and who thereby had subsisted and brought up their families.
Are not all these children of the state? Have they not had fathers and mothers who have been greatly relieved by procuring such outlets for them? Have they not children who are educated and brought up with the amount of their salaries, and profits of their service? Have they not had people of every class of industry, who have gained their bread by providing for their wants, while they were supplying those of the state, now become superfluous? In one word, does not the money they receive, circulate and return to the grand river, as I may call it, in the same manner as that of other members of the state?
For these reasons, I say, that taxes once properly imposed, and brought to circulate through a certain channel for a long time, cannot, suddenly, be suppressed, without occasioning far greater misery and distress than can arise from them, when levied with any degree of intelligence. This is nowise peculiar to the suppression of taxes; it is equally the same, in every sudden revolution of property. When the Templers were universally rooted out of Christendom, who doubts of the afflictions, misery, and distress, which followed to every class of inhabitants employed by them, in every kingdom in Europe? Could so large a consumption as that of so great an order cease at once, without drawing along with it numberless inconveniences? Did not the reformation itself, otherwise so great a blessing, starve a multitude of poor who were fed by the monastries? Did not the secularization of so many ecclesiastical benefices do great prejudice to many families, by blotting out an infinity of ways of procuring an easy livelihood for their children? Let those who do not feel the truth of what I here advance, examine the state of the protestant nobility in Germany, where you find the same hardships still subsisting, though in a degree much inferior to what it must have been at the time of this sudden revolution, which took bread from thousands of the younger sons of noble families.
Such revolutions have happened; such inconveniences have been felt: but they were not the deliberate act of any particular statesman. They were the effect of those convulsions which the human passions occasion. No body can justly impute them as necessary consequences of a reformation in religion. But let any statesman now, from a cool reflection upon the unnecessary load of employments in church, state, army, navy, finances, and law, and from a principle of distributive justice, abolish at once all that is superfluous, and the taxes, at the same time, out of which the emoluments arise, he will very soon set before the eyes of his people, such a scene of compassion, as will quickly blot out the remembrance of the favour.
We should not then find some individuals reduced to want, but numerous families; not a parcel of beggars starved, but industrious manufacturers; not a set of ecclesiastics, who from their state of celibacy and retreat, appeared already, in a manner, separated from the commonwealth, but a multitude of people connected by marriage, by society, and by all the tender bonds which unite mankind. Such a scene, I say, would not fail to excite compassion in the heart of those very men in whose favour the desolation was to be brought on; and the statesman would thereby lose the whole merit of his ill judged zeal for distributive justice, and be considered in the most unfavourable light that passion or prejudice could suggest.