PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 499 



of an opera box, given to obtain a mere pleasure, constitutes a part 

 of the fund out of which the musicians are paid, and if they are not 

 so paid they will not play or sing. The rent given for the right to fish 

 on a certain part of a river or its shores is a part of the cost of pro- 

 ducing the fish as a marketable commodity. If a house is hired for 

 the purpose of conducting any business in it, the price of that hire 

 does most certainly enter into the cost of that business, whatever it 

 may be, assuming that the use of the house is a necessity for carrying 

 it on. As no man will produce a commodity by which he is sure to 

 lose money, or fail to obtain the ordinary rate of profit, the tax must 

 be added to the price, or the production will cease. If a uniform tax 

 is imposed on all land occupied, it will be paid by the occupier, be- 

 cause occupation (house-building) will cease until the rent rises suf- 

 ficiently to cover the tax. The landlord assesses upon his tenants the 

 tax he has paid upon his real estate; each tenant assesses his share 

 upon each of his customers; and so perfect is this diffusion of land 

 taxation that every traveler from a distant part of the country who 

 remains for even a single day at a hotel pays, without stopping to think 

 about it, a portion of the taxes on the building, first paid by the 

 owner, then assessed upon the lessees, and next cut up by them 

 minutely in the per diem charge. But of course neither the owner 

 nor lessee really escapes taxation, because a portion of somebody 

 else's tax is thrown back upon them. 



Is it possible to believe that in a city like New York, where less 

 than four per cent of its population pay any direct tax on real estate, 

 or in a city like Montreal, where the expenses of the city are mainly 

 derived from taxes on land and the building occupancy of land, the 

 great majority of the inhabitants of those cities are exempt from all 

 land taxation? In China, where, as before shown, the title or owner- 

 ship of all land vests in the emperor, and the revenue of the Govern- 

 ment is almost exclusively derived from taxation of land in the form 

 of rent, does the burden of tax remain upon the owne? of the land? 

 If the tax in the form of rent is paid in the products of the land, as 

 undoubtedly it is in part, will not the cost of the percentage of the 

 whole product of the land that is thus taken increase to the renter 

 the cost of the percentage that is left to him ; or, if the product is 

 sold for money with which to pay the tax rent, will not its selling 

 price embody the cost of the tax, as it will the cost of every other 

 thing necessary for production? To affirm to the contrary is to 

 say that the price which the Chinese farmer pays for the right 

 of the exclusive use of his land is no part of the crops he may raise 

 upon it. 



Consider next the assertion of those who maintain the nondif- 

 fusion theory that taxes on land are paid by the owners because the 



