to the profits of a certain class of people,
which can only be guessed at, is necessarily
both arbitrary and unequal.
In France, the personal taille at present
(1775) annually imposed upon the twenty
generalities, called the countries of elections,
amounts to 40,107,239 livres, 16 sous.[62]
The proportion in which this sum is assessed
upon those different provinces, varies from
year to year, according to the reports which
are made to the king's council concerning the
goodness or badness of the crops, as well as
other circumstances, which may either increase
or diminish their respective abilities to
pay. Each generality is divided into a certain
number of elections; and the proportion
in which the sum imposed upon the whole
generality is divided among those different
elections, varies likewise from year to year,
according to the reports made to the council
concerning their respective abilities. It
seems impossible, that the council, with the
best intentions, can ever proportion, with tolerable
exactness, either of these two assessments
to the real abilities of the province or
district upon which they are respectively laid.
Ignorance and misinformation must always,
more or less, mislead the most upright council.
The proportion which each parish ought
to support of what is assessed upon the whole
election, and that which each individual
ought to support of what is assessed upon his
particular parish, are both in the same manner
varied from year to year, according as
circumstances are supposed to require. These
circumstances are judged of, in the one case,
by the officers of the election, in the other,
by those of the parish; and both the one and
the other are, more or less, under the direction
and influence of the intendant. Not
only ignorance and misinformation, but
friendship, party animosity, and private resentment,
are said frequently to mislead such
assessors. No man subject to such a tax, it
is evident, can ever be certain, before he is
assessed, of what he is to pay. He cannot
even be certain after he is assessed. If any
person has been taxed who ought to have been
exempted, or if any person has been taxed
beyond his proportion, though both must pay
in the mean time, yet if they complain, and
make good their complaints, the whole parish
is reimposed next year, in order to reimburse
them. If any of the contributors become
bankrupt or insolvent, the collector is obliged
to advance his tax; and the whole parish is
reimposed next year, in order to reimburse
the collector. If the collector himself should
become bankrupt, the parish which elects him
must answer for his conduct to the receiver-general
of the election. But, as it might be
troublesome for the receiver to prosecute the
whole parish, he takes at his choice five or six
of the richest contributors, and obliges them
to make good what had been lost by the insolvency
of the collector. The parish is afterwards
reimposed, in order to reimburse
those five or six. Such reimpositions are always
over and above the taille of the particular
year in which they are laid on.
When a tax is imposed upon the profits of
stock in a particular branch of trade, the
traders are all careful to bring no more goods
to market than what they can sell at a price
sufficient to reimburse them from advancing
the tax. Some of them withdraw a part of
their stocks from the trade, and the market is
more sparingly supplied than before. The
price of the goods rises, and the final payment
of the tax falls upon the consumer. But
when a tax is imposed upon the profits of
stock employed in agriculture, it is not the
interest of the farmers to withdraw any part
of their stock from that employment. Each
farmer occupies a certain quantity of land, for
which he pays rent. For the proper cultivation
of this land, a certain quantity of stock
is necessary; and by withdrawing any part
of this necessary quantity, the farmer is not
likely to be more able to pay either the rent
or the tax. In order to pay the tax, it can
never be his interest to diminish the quantity
of his produce, nor consequently to supply the
market more sparingly than before. The tax,
therefore, will never enable him to raise the
price of his produce, so as to reimburse himself,
by throwing the final payment upon the
consumer. The farmer, however, must have
his reasonable profit as well as every other
dealer, otherwise he must give up the trade.
After the imposition of a tax of this kind, he
can get this reasonable profit only by paying
less rent to the landlord. The more he is
obliged to pay in the way of tax, the less he
can afford to pay in the way of rent. A tax
of this kind, imposed during the currency of
a lease, may, no doubt, distress or ruin the
farmer. Upon the renewal of the lease, it
must always fall upon the landlord.
In the countries where the personal taille
takes place, the farmer is commonly assessed
in proportion to the stock which he appears
to employ in cultivation. He is, upon this
account, frequently afraid to have a good team
of horses or oxen, but endeavours to cultivate
with the meanest and most wretched instruments
of husbandry that he can. Such is his
distrust in the justice of his assessors, that he
counterfeits poverty, and wishes to appear
scarce able to pay any thing, for fear of being
obliged to pay too much. By this miserable
policy, he does not, perhaps, always consult
his own interest in the most effectual manner;
and he probably loses more by the diminution
of his produce, than he saves by that of his
tax. Though, in consequence of this wretched
cultivation, the market is, no doubt, somewhat
worse supplied; yet, the small rise of
price which this may occasion, as it is not
likely even to indemnify the farmer for the diminution