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

by inland navigation, pay no duty. Where they

are naturally cheap, they are consumed duty free ; where they are

naturally dear, they are loaded with a heavy duty.

 

Such taxes, though they raise the price of subsistence, and

consequently the wages of labour, yet they afford a considerable

revenue to government, which it might not be easy to find in any

other way. There may, therefore, be good reasons for continuing

them. The bounty upon the exportation of corn, so far us it

tends, in the actual state of tillage, to raise the price of that

necessary article, produces all the like bad effects ; and

instead of affording any revenue, frequently occasions a very

great expense to government. The high duties upon the importation

of foreign corn, which, in years of moderate plenty, amount to a

prohibition; and the absolute prohibition of the importation,

either of live cattle, or of salt provisions, which takes place

in the ordinary state of the law, and which, on account of the

scarcity, is at present suspended for a limited time with regard

to Ireland and the British plantations, have all had the bad

effects of taxes upon the necessaries of life, and produce no

revenue to government. Nothing seems necessary for the repeal of

such regulations, but to convince the public of the futility of

that system in consequence of which they have been established.

 

Taxes upon the necessaries of life are much higher in many other

countries than in Great Britain. Duties upon flour and meal when

ground at the mill, and upon bread when baked at the oven, take

place in many countries. In Holland the money-price of the:

bread consumed in towns is supposed to be doubled by means of

such taxes. In lieu of a part of them, the people who live in the

country, pay every year so much a-head, according to the sort of

bread they are supposed to consume. Those who consume wheaten

bread pay three guilders fifteen stivers; about six shillings and

ninepence halfpenny. Those, and some other taxes of the same

kind, by raising the price of labour, are said to have ruined the

greater part of the manufactures of Holland {Memoires concernant

les Droits, etc. p. 210, 211.}. Similar taxes, though not quite

so heavy, take place in the Milanese, in the states of Genoa, in

the duchy of Modena, in the duchies of Parma, Placentia, and

Guastalla, and the Ecclesiastical state. A French author {Le

Reformateur} of some note, has proposed to reform the finances of

his country, by substituting in the room of the greater part of

other taxes, this most ruinous of all taxes. There is nothing so

absurd, says Cicero, which has not sometimes been asserted by

some philosophers.

 

Taxes upon butcher’s meat are still more common than those upon

bread. It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher’s meat is any

where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the

help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to

be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher’s

meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most

nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere

requires that any man should eat butcher’s meat, as it in most

places requires that he should wear a linen shirt or a pair of

leather shoes.

 

Consumable commodities, whether necessaries or luxuries, may be

taxed in two different ways. The consumer may either pay an

annual sum on account of his using or consuming goods of a

certain kind; or the goods may be taxed while they remain in the

hands of the dealer, and before they are delivered to the

consumer. The consumable goods which last a considerable time

before they are consumed altogether, are most properly taxed in

the one way ; those of which the consumption is either immediate

or more speedy, in the other. The coach-tax and plate tax are

examples of the former method of imposing ; the greater part of

the other duties of excise and customs, of the latter.

 

A coach may, with good management, last ten or twelve years. It

might be taxed, once for all, before it comes out of the hands of

the coachmaker. But it is certainly more convenient for the

buyer to pay four pounds a-year for the privilege of keeping a

coach, than to pay all at once forty or fortyeight pounds

additional price to the coachmaker ; or a sum equivalent to what

the tax is likely to cost him during the time he uses the same

coach. A service of plate in the same manner, may last more

than a century. It is certainly-easier for the consumer to

pay five shillings a-year for every hundred ounces of plate, near

one per cent. of the value, than to redeem this long annuity at

five-and-twenty or thirty years purchase, which would enhance the

price at least five-and-twenty or thirty per cent. The

different taxes which affect houses, are certainly more

conveniently paid by moderate annual payments, than by a heavy

tax of equal value upon the first building or sale of the house.

 

It was the well-known proposal of Sir Matthew Decker, that all

commodities, even those of which the consumption is either

immediate or speedy, should be taxed in this manner; the dealer

advancing nothing, but the consumer paying a certain annual sum

for the licence to consume certain goods. The object of his

scheme was to promote all the different branches of foreign

trade, particularly the carrying trade, by taking away all duties

upon importation and exportation, and thereby enabling the

merchant to employ his whole capital and credit in the purchase

of goods and the freight of ships, no part of either being

diverted towards the advancing of taxes, The project, however, of

taxing, in this manner, goods of immediate or speedy consumption,

seems liable to the four following very important objections.

First, the tax would be more unequal, or not so well proportioned

to the expense and consumption of the different contributors, as

in the way in which it is commonly imposed. The taxes upon ale,

wine, and spiritous liquors, which are advanced by the dealers,

are finally paid by the different consumers, exactly in

proportion to their respective consumption. But if the tax were

to be paid by purchasing a licence to drink those liquors, the

sober would, in proportion to his consumption, be taxed much more

heavily than the drunken consumer. A family which exercised great

hospitality, would be taxed much more lightly than one who

entertained fewer guests. Secondly, this mode of taxation, by

paying for an annual, halfyearly, or quarterly licence to

consume certain goods, would diminish very much one of the

principal conveniences of taxes upon goods of speedy consumption;

the piece-meal payment. In the price of threepence halfpenny,

which is at present paid for a pot of porter, the different taxes

upon malt, hops, and beer, together with the extraordinary profit

which the brewer charges for having advanced than, may perhaps

amount to about three halfpence. If a workman can conveniently

spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he

cannot, he contents himself with a pint; and, as a penny saved is

a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance. He pays

the tax piece-meal, as he can afford to pay it, and when he can

afford to pay it, and every act of payment is perfectly

voluntary, and what he can avoid if he chuses to do so. Thirdly,

such taxes would operate less as sumptuary laws. When the licence

was once purchased, whether the purchaser drunk much or drunk

little, his tax would be the same. Fourthly, if a workman were to

pay all at once, by yearly, halfyearly, or quarlerly payments, a

tax equal to what he at present pays, with little or no

inconveniency, upon all the different pots and pints of porter

which he drinks in any such period of time, the sum might

frequently distress him very much. This mode of taxation,

therefore, it seems evident, could never, without the most

grievous oppression, produce a revenue nearly equal to what is

derived from the present mode without any oppression. In several

countries, however, commodities of an immediate or very speedy

consumption are taxed in this manner. In Holland, people pay so

much a-head for a licence to drink tea. I have already mentioned

a tax upon bread, which, so far as it is consumed in farm houses

and country villages, is there levied in the same manner.

 

The duties of excise are imposed chiefly upon goods of home

produce, destined for home consumption. They are imposed only

upon a few sorts of goods of the most general use. There can

never be any doubt, either concerning the goods which are subject

to those duties, or concerning the particular duty which each

species of goods is subject to. They fall almost altogether upon

what I call luxuries, excepting always the four duties above

mentioned, upon salt, soap, leather, candles, and perhaps that

upon green glass.

 

The duties of customs are much more ancient than those of excise.

They seem to have been called customs, as denoting customary

payments, which had been in use for time immemorial. They appear

to have been originally considered as taxes upon the profits of

merchants. During the barbarous times of feudal anarchy,

merchants, like all the other inhabitants of burghs, were

considered as little better than emancipated bondmen, whose

persons were despised, and whose gains were envied. The great

nobility, who had consented that the king should tallage the

profits of their own tenants, were not unwilling that he should

tallage likewise those of an order of men whom it was much less

their interest to protect. In those ignorant times, it was

not understood, that the profits of merchants are a subject not

taxable directly ; or that the final payment of all such taxes

must fall, with a considerable overcharge, upon the consumers.

 

The gains of alien merchants were looked upon more unfavourably

than those of English merchants. It was natural, therefore.

that those of the former should be taxed more heavily than those

of the latter. This distinction between the duties upon

aliens and those upon English merchants, which was begun from

ignorance, has been continued front the spirit of monopoly, or in

order to give our own merchants an advantage, both in the home

and in the foreign market.

 

With this distinction, the ancient duties of customs were imposed

equally upon all sorts of goods, necessaries as well its

luxuries, goods exported as well as goods imported. Why should

the dealers in one sort of goods, it seems to have been thought,

be more favoured than those in another ? or why should the

merchant exporter be more favoured than the merchant importer?

 

The ancient customs were divided into three branches. The first,

and, perhaps, the most ancient of all those duties, was that upon

wool and leather. It seems to have been chiefly or altogether an

exportation duty. When the woollen manufacture came to be

established in England, lest the king should lose any part of his

customs upon wool by the exportation of woollen cloths, a like

duty was imposed upon them. The other two branches were,

first, a duty upon wine, which being imposed at so much a-ton,

was called a tonnage; and, secondly, a duty upon all other goods,

which being imposed at so much a-pound of their supposed value,

was called a poundage. In the forty-seventh year of Edward III.,

a duty of sixpence in the pound was imposed upon all goods

exported and imported, except wools, wool-felts, leather, and

wines which were subject to particular duties. In the

fourteenth of Richard II., this duty was raised to one shilling

in