GENERAL PRINCIPLES 



be uniform, so far as levied for national 

 purposes ? 



One answer to this, and to many other 

 questions on the equities of finance, both 

 national and local, is that the canon of 

 equality, though placed first by Adam Smith, 

 is not the only canon of taxation, and cannot 

 always be assigned predominant importance. 

 Adam Smith himself asserted that certainty 

 was often to be preferred to equality, and 

 besides certainty there are in Adam Smith's 

 list the canons of convenience and economy. 

 The great merit of indirect taxes, such 

 as taxes on tea or sugar, is that they are 

 collected from the ultimate payers, namely, 

 the consumers, in insensible portions. It 

 is well known that owing to this very 

 simple characteristic of convenience to 

 the payer, indirect taxes can be in- 

 creased when the limits to the increase of 

 direct taxation have already been passed. 



