Secondly, All personal estates, except property in the public funds, and stock upon land, supposed necessary for agriculture, are charged in the same proportion as land-rents.
I shall now point out the inconveniences and bad consequences of these two capital defects.
When a tax is imposed at so many shillings in the pound upon the income of a whole district, every article of the property which produces it ought to be specified. If this be omitted, there is a legislative authority vested in those who make the distribution.
The articles which compose the whole property, and the revenue of each article being once determined, the state has it in its power to impose the tax according to what proportion it thinks fit; of one, two, or more shillings in the pound. But then, in favour of the contributors, the different articles which produce the supposed total, ought either to be specified in the law, or reference should be made to a book of valuation where they are recorded.
It is no easy matter to frame the valuation of all the property of a country: and it is a scheme I should be very far from proposing, unless the spirit of a nation took such a turn as to wish for it. But where a determinate sum has been in use to be levied upon a certain district, it does not appear so difficult to make a proportional distribution of it according to equity, and to adhere for the future to that distribution, considering it as a proportional valuation, if not a real one. This is done every year, and without it no such tax could be raised. But when annual distributions are made, discontents constantly arise; and the pretended equality thereby observed, produces worse effects than the inequalities which would follow from the other scheme: because the change in the relative value of possessions would then be chiefly owing to the industry of every proprietor in improving his lot.
How valuations in England were made originally I cannot tell[[50]]; but in Scotland, it is very certain, that as to lands they were all set down in a book of valuation at their supposed rents at that time. So let the sum raised be what it will, every man at least knows that his proportion must be according to his valuation in the general register.
[50]. There is no vestige in the history of England, since Dooms-day book, of any regular valuation being made of all the lands of the kingdom, nor of any tax imposed, singly, on that branch of property.
The subsidies, monthly assessments, and pound rates, in the different stages of the monarchy, have all been mixed duties; composed of a charge upon the lands, upon the money and personal estates of the subject, and frequently including a poll-tax, where qualities, that is rank, were differently charged.
The whole operation of distributing and raising this duty, has been by commissioners named by the King, or by parliament, who sometimes upon oath, and sometimes not, inquired into the extent of every one’s private fortune, and assessed them accordingly. Whoever wishes to have a more full account of this confused method of raising a land-tax in England, may consult Davenant’s Ways and Means, Article of Monthly Assessments, and Aids upon a Pound-rate.
In England, the case is totally different. The proportion every district is to pay, is indeed recorded by an original distribution made many years ago in King William’s time. By this it appears what every city, county, university, &c. is to pay according as the tax is imposed at one, two, three, or four shillings in the pound. This is precisely the regulation in France, as shall be more fully observed; but still such regulations nowise prevent the most grievous inconveniences which attend this tax; because the burden of it does not consist in the total amount, so much as in the partial distribution upon the inhabitants in every subdivision.