WEALTH OF NATIONS. 235 



be taken into the account. Not only do they pay a 

 heavy land tax, but still heavier county and parish 

 rates, amounting in all to between six and seven 

 millions. Supposing that the malt tax falls wholly on 

 the consumer, yet it certainly tends to discourage the 

 cultivation of barley very materially by diminishing 

 its natural consumption. Barley too, is the grain to 

 which soils are more universally adapted than to wheat; 

 and, independent of the direct operation of the tax in 

 discouraging its growth for the sake of revenue, the 

 regulations necessary to prevent illicit distillation press 

 severely on the grower by preventing him from using 

 grain to feed his cattle. All these considerations 

 made the late Mr. Bicardo, a strong and unsparing 

 advocate of free trade, propose a permanent fixed 

 duty on corn imported, as a compensation to the 

 farmer, in respect of his being pressed by burthens 

 from which the foreign grower is free.* Hence, too, 

 some reasoners extend several of Dr. Smith's argu- 

 ments in favour of countervailing duties, and his view 

 of further exceptions being allowed to the rule of free 

 importation by the consideration that other things may 

 be more important than wealth, and, possibly, that the 

 support of the internal institutions may be as much a 

 fair object of care as its external defence of a country. 

 On this inquiry I do not enter. The subject of steadi- 

 ness of price is not considered by Dr. Smith, though 



* The argument often so thoughtlessly employed by the wild adver- 

 saries of the landed interest, that the poor rates fall on houses, and thus 

 on the merchant and manufacturer as well as on the landowner and far- 

 mer, seems quite inconceivable. Suppose them right in stating that half 

 the poor rates fall on house-rent, still, as the landowner and farmer pay 

 this also, there would remain above three millions exclusively laid on 

 them. No man of common reflection can be ignorant that the manufac- 

 turer is rated at the rent of a building worth to him, perhaps, 20,000 

 a-year, that rent being 1,000 or 1,200, while the landowner whose 

 income is the same pays in the proportion ten or twelve tunes more. It 

 is equally inaccurate to reckon the excise, customs, stamps, as burthens 

 falling on the rest of the community and not on the land. The landowner 

 pays his share of these largely, and the stamps are peculiarly burthensome 

 to him. 



