It would be absurd to suppose, that the taxes necessary to discharge the
debt incurred during the late war, exceed the twentieth part of the value
of the products both of foreign and national industry, consumed within
the country. In this case, is it not impossible that the additional tax
of a twentieth, in whatever manner it may be assessed on the mass of
those products, should not enhance, by a twentieth, the value of this
very mass? Let us call it a fifteenth; all kind of reaction included.
Is it not impossible that this additional fifteenth on the price
of the products of industry, be not followed, sooner or later, by
an equal augmentation on the productions of the earth, unless the
proprietors of land should submit to diminish, by one fifteenth, their
own consumption,—the home consumption (_the only one that secures the
prosperity of the State_) and diminish it, in order to increase, by so
much, the exportation, according to the ideas commonly adopted which
would be as contrary to the facts that I shall adduce hereafter, as it
would prove hostile to the interest of the State, to the interest of the
proprietors, and would operate in direct opposition to the spirit of the
tax, _which is certainly to produce its own amount, without taking the
trouble, every year, of going in search of it to ~Lisbon~_.
Is it not impossible that the augmentation of one fifteenth, upon the
price of every produce in circulation, should require any thing above an
additional fifteenth, in the sums which had been hitherto sufficient for
_brokerage_, and the transports of all kinds of property?
Is it not impossible that this fifteenth, both in new specie and paper
currency, once obtained, the interest of the latter part of the debt
should not be very firmly established, _funded_, without any one being
the worse for it, _if the price of labour increases like that of its
produce_?
Such, I repeat it, such will be, in the last analysis, the result of the
underworkings of nature; of nature, ever more slow, but ever more skilful
in repairing evil than men are in creating it; of nature, who, as good at
all times as the bread which she breaks to her children, fills up without
intermission, incessantly levels, behind them, and unknown to them,
whilst they are amusing themselves or playing tricks upon each other, all
those little furrows which they imagine will be left to the care of their
posterity.
Some one, no doubt, will exclaim against this additional fifteenth upon
the prices of every commodity; an augmentation which I have represented
as the only remaining trace of a war, which, for five years, attracted in
both hemispheres, the eyes of all whose brains were not heated by it. I
shall grant therefore that it was necessary to add thereto,
First, the trifling difference which must result from the impossibility
of a thorough good understanding between the interested parties, together
with the intention, not very liberal, but natural enough to each of them,
of gaining more than they can lose.
Secondly, the difference, perhaps more sensible, which must follow the
method so much boasted, of taxing in preference, those objects which are
consumed by the rich; as if it were possible to apply to any object, an
extraordinary portion of a given revenue, without taking off that very
portion from some other article, the consumption of _which is equally
necessary to the subsistence of artizans of another kind_.
Thirdly, and in fine, the far more considerable difference which must be
produced, _especially in England_, by another kind of taxation, of which
I shall speak hereafter.
Nothing contributes so much to render a question undeterminable, as to
perplex it with a multitude of accessaries, each of which would require
a separate dissertation; consequently, nothing can render the solution
easier than to reduce it to the smallest compass. Some other person will,
no doubt, do much better, what I can do only according to the extent
of my abilities; nor did ever an author peruse his own work with more
pleasure than I shall read the production of any one who shall throw the
light of evidence where I can only form surmises. But if it be true,
that after a short space of time, without any other assistance than the
natural clashing of one interest with another, taxes, _judiciously laid_,
are hurtful neither to individuals nor to the State,—would it not be
better to labour with care to _lay them judiciously_, than to think of a
reimbursement, the only effect of which will be to diminish, for a short
time, amongst some individuals, the power of paying those very taxes?