which, in a great empire, has ever been
drawn from such taxes; and the greatest sum
which they have ever afforded, might always
have been found in some other way much
more convenient to the people.
Taxes upon Consumable Commodities.
The impossibility of taxing the people, in
proportion to their revenue, by any capitation,
seems to have given occasion to the invention
of taxes upon consumable commodities. The
state not knowing how to tax, directly and
proportionably, the revenue of its subjects,
endeavours to tax it indirectly by taxing their
expense, which, it is supposed, will, in most
cases, be nearly in proportion to their revenue.
Their expense is taxed, by taxing the
consumable commodities upon which it is laid
out.
Consumable commodities are either necessaries
or luxuries.
By necessaries I understand, not only the
commodities which are indispensibly necessary
for the support of life, but whatever the
custom of the country renders it indecent for
creditable people, even of the lowest order, to
be without. A linen shirt, for example, is,
strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The
Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very
comfortably, though they had no linen. But
in the present times, through the greater part
of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would
be ashamed to appear in public without a linen
shirt, the want of which would be supposed
to denote that disgraceful degree of
poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can
well fall into without extreme bad conduct.
Custom, in the same manner, has rendered
leather shoes a necessary of life in England.
The poorest creditable person, of either sex,
would be ashamed to appear in public without
them. In Scotland, custom has rendered
them a necessary of life to the lowest order
of men; but not to the same order of women,
who may, without any discredit, walk about
barefooted. In France, they are necessaries
neither to men nor to women; the lowest
rank of both sexes appearing there publicly,
without any discredit, sometimes in wooden
shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries,
therefore, I comprehend, not only
those things which nature, but those things
which the established rules of decency have
rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.
All other things I call luxuries, without
meaning, by this appellation, to throw the
smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate
use of them. Beer and ale, for example,
in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine
countries, I call luxuries. A man of any
rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally
from tasting such liquors. Nature does
not render them necessary for the support of
life; and custom nowhere renders it indecent
to live without them.
As the wages of labour are everywhere regulated,
partly by the demand for it, and
partly by the average price of the necessary
articles of subsistence; whatever raises this
average price must necessarily raise those
wages; so that the labourer may still be able
to purchase that quantity of those necessary
articles which the state of the demand for labour,
whether increasing, stationary, or declining,
requires that he should have.[70] A tax
upon those articles necessarily raises their
price somewhat higher than the amount of
the tax, because the dealer, who advances the
tax, must generally get it back, with a profit.
Such a tax must, therefore, occasion a rise in
the wages of labour, proportionable to this
rise of price.
It is thus that a tax upon the necessaries of
life operates exactly in the same manner as
a direct tax upon the wages of labour. The
labourer, though he may pay it out of his hand,
cannot, for any considerable time at least, be
properly said even to advance it. It must always,
in the long-run, be advanced to him by
his immediate employer, in the advanced state
of wages. His employer, if he is a manufacturer,
will charge upon the price of his goods
the rise of wages, together with a profit,
so that the final payment of the tax, together
with this overcharge, will fall upon the consumer.
If his employer is a farmer, the final
payment, together with a like overcharge, will
fall upon the rent of the landlord.
It is otherwise with taxes upon what I call
luxuries, even upon those of the poor. The
rise in the price of the taxed commodities, will
not necessarily occasion any rise in the wages
of labour. A tax upon tobacco, for example,
though a luxury of the poor, as well as of
the rich, will not raise wages. Though it
is taxed in England at three times, and in
France at fifteen times its original price, those
high duties seem to have no effect upon the
wages of labour. The same thing may be
said of the taxes upon tea and sugar, which,
in England and Holland, have become luxuries
of the lowest ranks of people; and of
those upon chocolate, which, in Spain, is said
to have become so.
The different taxes which, in Great Britain,
have, in the course of the present century,
been imposed upon spiritous liquors, are not
supposed to have had any effect upon the
wages of labour. The rise in the price of
porter, occasioned by an additional tax of three
shillings upon the barrel of strong beer, has
not raised the wages of common labour in
London. These were about eighteen pence or
twenty pence a-day before the tax, and they
are not more now.
The high price of such commodities does