DUTIES ON LUXURIES 99 



or is indulged to excess, and therefore even a 

 high duty has its merits. Just as liquor drinking 

 is a disappearance of capital that never repro- 

 duces, so also is tobacco smoking. 



There are many forms of luxury that cannot so 

 well be taxed, for the purpose of raising revenue. 

 Undoubtedly a considerable amount of capital is 

 locked up in the form of clothing, jewellery, 

 pictures, and so forth — capital that reproduces 

 no more. As far as the principle already cited 

 goes, there is nothing financially wrong in taxing 

 so as to annex a portion of such non-reproductive 

 capital ; but it is seldom expedient to do so 

 directly, owing to the expense of collection and 

 the comparative smallness of the yield. The 

 death duties take in, at intervals of time, a 

 sufficiently large proportion of revenue from 

 such luxuries ; and in other cases licences, such 

 as gun and motor-car licences, are quite a suffi- 

 cient levy. 



There would be a great disadvantage, not 

 altogether to the industrial progress of a nation, 

 but to many of its people, in pressing too far 

 taxes on certain luxuries. If, for instance, a gun 

 licence were made so expensive as to be pro- 

 hibitive, a large number of men would be made 

 idle, and, owing to the nature of their emplo}''- 

 ment, it would be long before they found other 

 occupation : perhaps many of them might never 

 again be as they were. It is not sound legislation 

 that throws suddenly a noteworthy amount of 

 labour on the market. The destruction of capital 

 in one form may thus be made to cease, the 



