258 ADAM SMITH. 



lord or the consumer. Those on luxuries are not so 

 transferred, even those on the luxuries of the poor. 

 Thus the duties on beer and tobacco do not raise wages, 

 nor materially diminish the power of bringing up a 

 family ; nor do they necessarily raise the price of any 

 except the taxed commodities. The taxes on the four 

 necessaries, salt, leather, soap and candles, affect in 

 some small degree the wages of labour ; however, the 

 salt-tax, now repealed (somewhat hastily, by the efforts 

 of party,) pressed so very lightly that its loss has been 

 pretty generally lamented, and it certainly yielded to 

 the clamour against its disproportion to the price of 

 the article, and its requiring so many persons to collect 

 it. Dr. Smith, however, condemns much more strongly 

 two other measures which operate as taxes on the mere 

 necessaries of life, and yield no revenue ; the bounty 

 on exportation of corn, and the protecting duties on 

 the importation of that and meat. But he considers 

 these as clearly tending to raise the price of labour, 

 and consequently regards their repeal as sure to lower 

 wages ; so that the advocates of that repeal are pre- 

 vented from quoting his authority because they always 

 deny this tendency of the measure, or at least have 

 always denied it since the working-classes hearing the 

 arguments originally advanced for the repeal, from its 

 being expected to lower wages, plainly indicated their 

 aversion to the change. Dr. Smith shows that in other 

 countries a high direct tax is imposed on flour, and even 

 on bread, instancing Holland, where it was supposed 

 to make the money price of bread double in the towns ; 

 the country inhabitants paying a poll-tax in lieu of it. 

 The taxes on luxuries fall pretty equally on the whole 

 people, according to their consumption. The great 

 bulk of them is paid by the inferior and most numer- 

 ous classes, but no rise of wages being caused by this 

 payment, the burthen remains where it first falls. Dr. 

 Smith strongly recommends the repeal of beer-taxes, 

 and substituting malt-taxes instead ; this has since been 



