WEALTH OF NATIONS. 1.91 



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 capitation 

 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 accord- 

 ing to property, and subjected the people to a severe 

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

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

 tions 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 luxu- 

 ries. Taxes on the former would be perfectly unequal if 

 their incidence was ultimately what it is intended to be in 

 the first instance ; but they are really taxes on labour, and 

 must fall on the employer, not on the workman, the em- 

 ployer laying them on the landlord or the consumer. Those 

 on luxuries are not so transferred, even those on the luxur- 

 ies 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. 



