The Land Taxation and the Economists. 159 



bably represents the state of mind in which our early- 

 legislators approached the subject of taxation : on it our 

 present fiscal system was originally based ; and at a time 

 when the French economists enunciated their theory that the 

 soil was the only source of wealth, and therefore should be 

 taxed in as direct a method as possible, there were slight 

 hopes of any revulsion of feeling on the subject. 



But when the idea began to prevail that trade and agricul- 

 ture prospered or languished together, and when as a nation 

 we began to utilise sources of wealth derived from foreign soils, 

 the policy of deriving all imposts from the land came to be 

 challenged. Any depression, temporary or prolonged, of agri- 

 cultural prosperity, when once it became admitted that trade 

 also would be affected, would accentuate the demand for fiscal 

 reform. Admitting, then, that even the mercantilists were 

 prepared to fix a limit beyond which the soil should not be 

 burdened, we must also be careful to bear in mind that their 

 theories were based on a wrong conception of the nature of 

 wealth, and that their reasoning was never entirely free from 

 error. In fact, at this early period, we find truth largely mixed 

 with fiction in one and the same mind. Thus Sir William 

 Petty, in his Political Arithmetick, chapter i., says : " The great 

 and ultimate effect of trade is not wealth at large, but particu- 

 larly abundance of silver, gold, and jewels, which are not 

 perishable, nor so mutable as other commodities, but are 

 wealth at all times and all places — whereas abundance of wine, 

 corn, fowls, etc., are riches, but hie et nunc, so as the raising 

 of such commodities and the following of such trade which 

 does store the country with gold, silver, jewels, etc., is profit- 

 able before all others." But in another work ^ of his we find 

 the Smithian theory already abroad ; when for example he 

 seeks (very impracticably, it is true) to formulate a scheme 

 whereby '' all things ought to be valued by two natural de- 

 nominators — land and labour." 



Then, again, Child, ^ believing in the union of agricultural 

 and commercial interests, and seeing in the supposed depres- 



* A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions, etc., 1679. 

 ' A New Discourse of Trade, 1690. 



