what the expense of the sober and industrious
poor, and must consequently raise more or
less the wages of their labour.
In a country where the winters are so cold
as in Great Britain, fuel is, during that season,
in the strictest sense of the word, a necessary
of life, not only for the purpose of dressing
victuals, but for the comfortable subsistence
of many different sorts of workmen who
work within doors; and coals are the cheapest
of all fuel. The price of fuel has so important
an influence upon that of labour, that all
over Great Britain, manufactures have confined
themselves principally to the coal countries;
other parts of the country, on account
of the high price of this necessary article, not
being able to work so cheap. In some manufactures,
besides, coal is a necessary instrument
of trade; as in those of glass, iron, and
all other metals. If a bounty could in any case
be reasonable, it might perhaps be so upon
the transportation of coals from those parts of
the country in which they abound, to those in
which they are wanted. But the legislature,
instead of a bounty, has imposed a tax of three
shillings and threepence a-ton upon coals
carried coastways; which, upon most sorts
of coal, is more than sixty per cent. of the
original price at the coal pit. Coals carried,
either by land or by inland navigation, pay
no duty. Where they are naturally cheap,
they are consumed duty free; where they are
naturally dear, they are loaded with a heavy
duty.
Such taxes, though they raise the price of
subsistence, and consequently the wages of
labour, yet they afford a considerable revenue
to government, which it might not be easy to
find in any other way. There may, therefore,
be good reasons for continuing them. The
bounty upon the exportation of corn, so far
as it tends, in the actual state of tillage, to
raise the price of that necessary article, produces
all the like bad effects; and instead of
affording any revenue, frequently occasions a
very great expense to government. The high
duties upon the importation of foreign corn,
which, in years of moderate plenty, amount
to a prohibition; and the absolute prohibition
of the importation, either of live cattle, or of
salt provisions, which takes place in the ordinary
state of the law, and which, on account
of the scarcity, is at present suspended for a
limited time with regard to Ireland and the
British plantations, have all had the bad effects
of taxes upon the necessaries of life, and produce
no revenue to government. Nothing
seems necessary for the repeal of such regulations,
but to convince the public of the futility
of that system in consequence of which they
have been established.
Taxes upon the necessaries of life are much
higher in many other countries than in Great
Britain. Duties upon flour and meal when
ground at the mill, and upon bread when
baked at the oven, take place in many countries.
In Holland the money-price of the
bread consumed in towns is supposed to be
doubled by means of such taxes. In lieu of a
part of them, the people who live in the country,
pay every year so much a-head, according to
the sort of bread they are supposed to consume.
Those who consume wheaten bread pay three
guilders fifteen stivers; about six shillings
and ninepence halfpenny. These, and some
other taxes of the same kind, by raising the
price of labour, are said to have ruined the
greater part of the manufactures of Holland[71].
Similar taxes, though not quite so heavy, take
place in the Milanese, in the states of Genoa,
in the duchy of Modena, in the duchies of
Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla, and the Ecclesiastical
state. A French author[72] of some
note, has proposed to reform the finances of
his country, by substituting in the room of the
greater part of other taxes, this most ruinous
of all taxes. There is nothing so absurd, says
Cicero, which has not sometimes been asserted
by some philosophers.
Taxes upon butcher's meat are still more
common than those upon bread. It may indeed
be doubted, whether butcher's meat is
any where a necessary of life. Grain and
other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese,
and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be
had, it is known from experience, can, without
any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful,
the most wholesome, the most nourishing,
and the most invigorating diet. Decency
nowhere requires that any man should eat
butcher's meat, as it in most places requires
that he should wear a linen shirt or a pair of
leather shoes.
Consumable commodities, whether necessaries
or luxuries, may be taxed in two different
ways. The consumer may either pay
an annual sum on account of his using or
consuming goods of a certain kind; or the
goods may be taxed while they remain in the
hands of the dealer, and before they are delivered
to the consumer. The consumable
goods which last a considerable time before
they are consumed altogether, are most properly
taxed in the one way; those of which
the consumption is either immediate or more
speedy, in the other. The coach-tax and plate-tax
are examples of the former method of imposing;
the greater part of the other duties of
excise and customs, of the latter.
A coach may, with good management, last
ten or twelve years. It might be taxed,
once for all, before it comes out of the hands
of the coach-maker. But it is certainly more
convenient for the buyer to pay four pounds
a-year for the privilege of keeping a coach,
than to pay all at once forty or forty-eight
pounds additional price to the coach-maker;