According to him, this is the quantity of income remaining after the following deductions: 1mo, What is necessary to clothe and feed the people, 2do, What is necessary for their defence in time of war, and ornament in time of peace. But according to my notions, I must also deduct all that is consumed in superfluities; for what is consumed, whether necessarily or superfluously, never can make an article of superlucration, wealth, or national stock.
The superlucration then of a nation consists in the augmentations made upon her stock of every kind, capable of producing a proportional income: it is the converting into something durable the well employed time of the inhabitants. In this sense the new pavement of London, the roads, buildings, ships, &c. in England, are all articles of superlucration, as well as the improvement of the lands, and consolidation of the balance of her trade, which has created that part of the public funds belonging to natives.
Quest. 4. Is it possible to convert a land-tax into one of the proportional kind?
This is a curious speculation; and as it is a short exercise upon several principles of this science, it comes in properly at the conclusion of our work.
To make a land-tax proportional, the proprietors of land should be enabled to draw back the burden, in the sale of the earth’s productions. This they cannot do, as matters stand. The farmers who pay no land-tax undersell them; because they have no tax to draw back.
Since the tax, therefore, cannot be drawn back directly, let us apply our principles to discover a method how this might be done indirectly.
Let nothing but lands be subject to this imposition.
Let every part of them be valued, and recorded in a general register.
Let bread, butchers-meat, and subsistence of all kinds, be laid under an excise, in all markets, and nowhere else, at a rate sufficient to raise the tax intended to be laid upon the lands; and let the amount of this tax be drawn back by the landlords, in proportion to the valuation by which they have paid the land-tax.
That this is a reasonable imposition, appears from the whole plan of this work. We have seen, in the first book, how the great body of the people is divided into labourers and free hands; that the free hands are the inhabitants of towns, who go to market for subsistence, and consume what corresponds to the land-rents; consequently the landlords, who at present pay a cumulative tax, which they cannot draw back in any shape, are justly intitled to the amount of this proportional tax, laid upon the great articles which produce their land-rents, and which are consumed by the inhabitants not employed in agriculture.