186 ADAM SMITH. 



while it ruins by prosecutions; or by subjecting the 

 people to vexatious search and other annoyances, which 

 though not directly money 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 conform 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 there- 

 fore 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 con- 

 tend, that all taxes fall ultimately upon rent, and there- 

 fore they argue that they ought to be at once and 

 directly imposed upon it. But though Dr. Smith de- 

 clines a discussion of the metaphysical reasoning by which 

 they maintain such to be the ultimate incidence of all 

 taxes, he yet undertakes to show by a review of the facts 

 and arguments that the just conclusion is otherwise. He 

 gives, however, no such proof ; he contents himself with 

 a statement taken from the Memoires sur les Droits, pub- 

 lished 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 



