An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

affectionate, and generous allies; and

the same sort of parental affection on the one side, and filial

respect on the other, might revive between Great Britain and her

colonies, which used to subsist between those of ancient Greece

and the mother city from which they descended.

 

In order to render any province advantageous to the empire to

which it belongs, it ought to afford, in time of peace, a revenue

to the public, sufficient not only for defraying the whole

expense of its own peace establishment, but for contributing its

proportion to the support of the general government of the

empire. Every province necessarily contributes, more or less, to

increase the expense of that general government. If any

particular province, therefore, does not contribute its share

towards defraying this expense, an unequal burden must be thrown

upon some other part of the empire. The extraordinary revenue,

too, which every province affords to the public in time of war,

ought, from parity of reason, to bear the same proportion to the

extraordinary revenue of the whole empire, which its ordinary

revenue does in time of peace. That neither the ordinary nor

extraordinary revenue which Great Britain derives from her

colonies, bears this proportion to the whole revenue of the

British empire, will readily be allowed. The monopoly, it has

been supposed, indeed, by increasing the private revenue of the

people of Great Britain, and thereby enabling them to pay greater

taxes, compensates the deficiency of the public revenue of the

colonies. But this monopoly, I have endeavoured to show, though a

very grievous tax upon the colonies, and though it may increase

the revenue of a particular order of men in Great Britain,

diminishes, instead of increasing, that of the great body of the

people, and consequently diminishes, instead of increasing, the

ability of the great body of the people to pay taxes. The men,

too, whose revenue the monopoly increases, constitute a

particular order, which it is both absolutely impossible to tax

beyond the proportion of other orders, and extremely impolitic

even to attempt to tax beyond that proportion, as I shall

endeavour to show in the following book. No particular resource,

therefore, can be drawn from this particular order.

 

The colonies may be taxed either by their own assemblies, or by

the parliament of Great Britain.

 

That the colony assemblies can never be so managed as to levy

upon their constituents a public revenue, sufficient, not only to

maintain at all times their own civil and military establishment,

but to pay their proper proportion of the expense of the general

government of the British empire, seems not very probable. It was

a long time before even the parliament of England, though placed

immediately under the eye of the sovereign, could be brought

under such a system of management, or could be rendered

sufficiently liberal in their grants for supporting the civil and

military establishments even of their own country. It was only by

distributing among the particular members of parliament a great

part either of the offices, or of the disposal of the offices

arising from this civil and military establishment, that such a

system of management could be established, even with regard to

the parliament of England. But the distance of the colony

assemblies from the eye of the sovereign, their number, their

dispersed situation, and their various constitutions, would

render it very difficult to manage them in the same manner, even

though the sovereign had the same means of doing it; and those

means are wanting. It would be absolutely impossible to

distribute among all the leading members of all the colony

assemblies such a share, either of the offices, or of the

disposal of the offices, arising from the general government of

the British empire, as to dispose them to give up their

popularity at home, and to tax their constituents for the support

of that general government, of which almost the whole emoluments

were to be divided among people who were strangers to them. The

unavoidable ignorance of administration, besides, concerning the

relative importance of the different members of those different

assemblies, the offences which must frequently be given, the

blunders which must constantly be committed, in attempting to

manage them in this manner, seems to render such a system of

management altogether impracticable with regard to them.

 

The colony assemblies, besides, cannot be supposed the proper

judges of what is necessary for the defence and support of the

whole empire. The care of that defence and support is not

entrusted to them. It is not their business, and they have no

regular means of information concerning it. The assembly of a

province, like the vestry of a parish, may judge very properly

concerning the affairs of its own particular district, but can

have no proper means of judging concerning those of the whole

empire. It cannot even judge properly concerning the proportion

which its own province bears to the whole empire, or concerning

the relative degree of its wealth and importance, compared with

the other provinces; because those other provinces are not under

the inspection and superintendency of the assembly of a

particular province. What is necessary for the defence and

support of the whole empire, and in what proportion each part

ought to contribute, can be judged of only by that assembly which

inspects and superintends the affairs of the whole empire.

 

It has been proposed, accordingly, that the colonies should be

taxed by requisition, the parliament of Great Britain determining

the sum which each colony ought to pay, and the provincial

assembly assessing and levying it in the way that suited best the

circumstances of the province. What concerned the whole empire

would in this way be determined by the assembly which inspects

and superintends the affairs of the whole empire ; and the

provincial affairs of each colony might still be regulated by its

own assembly. Though the colonies should, in this case, have no

representatives in the British parliament, yet, if we may judge

by experience, there is no probability that the parliamentary

requisition would be unreasonable. The parliament of England has

not, upon any occasion, shewn the smallest disposition to

overburden those parts of the empire which are not represented in

parliament. The islands of Guernsey and Jersey, without any means

of resisting the authority of parliament, are more lightly taxed

than any part of Great Britain. Parliament, in attempting to

exercise its supposed right, whether well or ill grounded, of

taxing the colonies, has never hitherto demanded of them anything

which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by

their fellow subjects at home. If the contribution of the

colonies, besides, was to rise or fall in proportion to the rise

or fall of the land-tax, parliament could not tax them without

taxing, at the same time, its own constituents, and the colonies

might, in this case, be considered as virtually represented in

parliament.

 

Examples are not wanting of empires in which all the different

provinces are not taxed, if I may be allowed the expression, in

one mass ; but in which the sovereign regulates the sum which

each province ought to pay, and in some provinces assesses and

levies it as he thinks proper ; while in others he leaves it to

be assessed and levied as the respective states of each province

shall determine. In some provinces of France, the king not only

imposes what taxes he thinks proper, but assesses and levies them

in the way he thinks proper. From others he demands a certain

sum, but leaves it to the states of each province to assess and

levy that sum as they think proper. According to the scheme of

taxing by requisition, the parliament of Great Britain would

stand nearly in the same situation towards the colony assemblies,

as the king of France does towards the states of those provinces

which still enjoy the privilege of having states of their own,

the provinces of France which are supposed to be the best

governed.

 

But though, according to this scheme, the colonies could have no

just reason to fear that their share of the public burdens should

ever exceed the proper proportion to that of their

fellow-citizens at home, Great Britain might have just reason to

fear that it never would amount to that proper proportion. The

parliament of Great Britain has not, for some time past, had the

same established authority in the colonies, which the French king

has in those provinces of France which still enjoy the privilege

of having states of their own. The colony assemblies, if they

were not very favourably disposed (and unless more skilfully

managed than they ever have been hitherto, they are not very

likely to be so), might still find many pretences for evading or

rejecting the most reasonable requisitions of parliament. A

French war breaks out, we shall suppose; ten millions must

immediately be raised, in order to defend the seat of the empire.

This sum must be borrowed upon the credit of some parliamentary

fund mortgaged for paying the interest. Part of this fund

parliament proposes to raise by a tax to be levied in Great

Britain ; and part of it by a requisition to all the different

colony assemblies of America and the West Indies. Would people

readily advance their money upon the credit of a fund which

partly depended upon the good humour of all those assemblies, far

distant from the seat of the war, and sometimes, perhaps,

thinking themselves not much concerned in the event of it ? Upon

such a fund, no more money would probably be advanced than what

the tax to be levied in Great Britain might be supposed to answer

for. The whole burden of the debt contracted on account of the

war would in this manner fall, as it always has done hitherto,

upon Great Britain; upon a part of the empire, and not upon the

whole empire. Great Britain is, perhaps, since the world began,

the only state which, as it has extended its empire, has only

increased its expense, without once augmenting its resources.

Other states have generally disburdened themselves, upon their

subject and subordinate provinces, of the most considerable part

of the expense of defending the empire. Great Britain has

hitherto suffered her subject and subordinate provinces to

disburden themselves upon her of almost this whole expense. In

order to put Great Britain upon a footing of equality with her

own colonies, which the law has hitherto supposed to be subject

and subordinate, it seems necessary, upon the scheme of taxing

them by parliamentary requisition, that parliament should have

some means of rendering its requisitions immediately effectual,

in case the colony assemblies should attempt to evade or reject

them; and what those means are, it is not very easy to conceive,

and it has not yet been explained.

 

Should the parliament of Great Britain, at the same time, be ever

fully established in the right of taxing the colonies, even

independent of the consent of their own assemblies, the

importance of those assemblies would, from that moment, be at an

end, and with it, that of all the leading men of British America.

Men desire to have some share in the management of public

affairs, chiefly on account of the importance which it gives

them. Upon the power which the greater part of the leading men,

the natural aristocracy of every country, have of preserving or

defending their respective importance, depends the stability and

duration of every system of free government. In the attacks which

those leading men are continually making upon the importance of

one another, and in the defence of their own, consists the whole

play of domestic faction and ambition. The leading men of

America, like those of all other countries, desire to preserve

their own importance. They feel, or imagine, that if their

assemblies, which they are