WEALTH OF NATIONS. 253 



payments, may yet be reckoned as costing what every 

 one would readily give to avoid the evil. This fourth 

 maxim thus appears to be the most important of the 

 whole. According as any tax does or does not con- 

 form itself to these several maxims, it is good or bad. 

 1. A tax on rent may be imposed either by valuing 

 each district at so much yearly, and taking thence a 

 sum, which shall never afterwards be altered; or by 

 taking so much in proportion to the actual rent in 

 every year, or at stated periods of adjustment, and so 

 making the tax rise or fall with the actual value of 

 landed income. In this country the land-tax, settled 

 in the 4th William and Mary, comes under the first of 

 these classes, and therefore sins against the first of the 

 four maxims, but conforms itself to the other three. 

 The second kind of tax is the Impot Fonciere of the 

 French Economists. They contend, that all taxes fall 

 ultimately upon rent, and therefore they argue that 

 they ought to be at once and directly imposed upon 

 it. But though Dr. Smith declines a discussion of the 

 metaphysical reasoning by which they maintain such 

 to be the ultimate incidence of all taxes, he yet under* 

 takes to show by a review of the facts and arguments 

 that the just conclusion is otherwise. He gives, how- 

 ever, no such proof; he contents himself with a state- 

 ment taken from the Memoires sur les Droits, published 

 by the French Government, in what manner the tax 

 upon rent and tithes is secured in many of the prin- 

 cipal countries of the Continent. He next considers 

 land-taxes, when taken in proportion to the produce 

 and not to the rent; and he shows clearly enough, 

 that these, though advanced by the farmer, are paid by 

 the landlord. Tithe and other such burthens, falling 

 under this description, are unequal because in different 

 lands and different situations, the produce, and conse- 

 quently the tax, bears a different proportion to the 

 rent. Taxes on the rent of houses, he clearly shows, 

 must fall indifferently on' all the sources of revenue, 



