WEALTH OF NATIONS. 257 



the trader is unable so to throw it, and he must either 

 pay it himself or quit the trade. 



3. Taxes on wages must be paid by the rise of wages 

 a good deal higher than the tax ; the tax is not even ad- 

 vanced in the first instance by the labourer, but by his 

 employer, who must lay it on goods, or deduct it, if a 

 farmer, from rent. Hence the consumer or the land- 

 lord must always pay such taxes. The French taille 

 was charged on labourers as well as farmers, and pro- 

 duced great evils. In Bohemia artificers paid a tax of 

 ten pounds a year in the highest class, and so down to 

 two pounds ten shillings in the lowest. The emoluments 

 of office-bearers if so taxed do not fall under the same 

 rule, as the competition is not open. The tax on these 

 falls on the officer. 



4. The taxes intended to fall on all the three, funds, 

 rent, profits and wages, indiscriminately, are capita- 

 tion taxes, and those on consumable commodities. 



(1.) Poll-taxes are utterly unjust if they be not ap- 

 portioned to fortune ; even then a great injustice must 

 take place, and a yearly inquisition is necessary, as a 

 man's fortune is constantly varying. If they are, as 

 our poll-tax of William III.'s time, laid on rank, they 

 are manifestly unequal. In France the poll-tax was 

 laid on the higher orders by a tariff according to rank ; 

 on the lower and middle classes it was levied according 

 to property, and subjected the people to a severe in- 

 quisition. In so far as the taxes fall on the lower 

 orders they are levied on wages, and liable to the ob- 

 jections stated to those imposts. The difficulties of a 

 poll-tax being applied to expenditure or income gave 

 rise to the taxes on consumable commodities. 



(2.) These commodities are either necessaries or 

 luxuries. Taxes on the former would be perfectly un- 

 equal if their incidence was ultimately what it is in- 

 tended to be in the first instance ; but they are really 

 taxes on labour, and must fall on the employer, not on 

 the workman, the employer laying them on the land- 



