Such taxes are, or may be, perfectly certain;
or may be assessed, so as to leave no
doubt concerning either what ought to be
paid, or when it ought to be paid; concerning
either the quantity or the time of payment.
Whatever uncertainty there may sometimes
be, either in the duties of customs in
Great Britain, or in other duties of the same
kind in other countries, it cannot arise from
the nature of those duties, but from the inaccurate
or unskilful manner in which the law
that imposes them is expressed.
Taxes upon luxuries generally are, and always
may be, paid piece-meal, or in proportion
as the contributors have occasion to purchase
the goods upon which they are imposed.
In the time and mode of payment, they are,
or may be, of all taxes the most convenient.
Upon the whole, such taxes, therefore, are
perhaps as agreeable to the three first of the
four general maxims concerning taxation, as
any other. They offend in every respect
against the fourth.
Such taxes, in proportion to what they
bring into the public treasury of the state, always
take out, or keep out, of the pockets of
the people, more than almost any other taxes.
They seem to do this in all the four different
ways in which it is possible to do it.
First, the levying of such taxes, even when
imposed in the most judicious manner, requires
a great number of custom-house and
excise officers, whose salaries and perquisites
are a real tax upon the people, which brings
nothing into the treasury of the state. This
expense, however, it must be acknowledged,
is more moderate in Great Britain than in
most other countries. In the year which
ended on the 5th of July, 1775, the gross
produce of the different duties, under the management
of the commissioners of excise in
England, amounted to L.5,507,308 : 18 : 8¼,
which was levied at an expense of little more
than five and a-half per cent. From this
gross produce, however, there must be deducted
what was paid away in bounties and
drawbacks upon the exportation of exciseable
goods, which will reduce the neat produce
below five millions.[74] The levying of the
salt duty, and excise duty, but under a different
management, is much more expensive.
The neat revenue of the customs does not
amount to two millions and a-half, which is
levied at an expense of more than ten per
cent., in the salaries of officers and other incidents.
But the perquisites of custom-house
officers are everywhere much greater than
their salaries; at some ports more than double
or triple those salaries. If the salaries of
officers, and other incidents, therefore, amount
to more than ten per cent. upon the
neat revenue of the customs, the whole expense
of levying that revenue may amount,
in salaries and perquisites together, to more
than twenty or thirty per cent. The officers of
excise receive few or no perquisites; and the
administration of that branch of the revenue
being of more recent establishment, is in general
less corrupted than that of the customs,
into which length of time has introduced and
authorized many abuses. By charging upon
malt the whole revenue which is at present
levied by the different duties upon malt and
malt liquors, a saving, it is supposed, of more
than L.50,000, might be made in the annual
expense of the excise. By confining the
duties of customs to a few sorts of goods, and
by levying those duties according to the excise
laws, a much greater saving might probably
be made in the annual expense of the
customs.
Secondly, such taxes necessarily occasion
some obstruction or discouragement to certain
branches of industry. As they always
raise the price of the commodity taxed, they
so far discourage its consumption, and consequently
its production. If it is a commodity
of home growth or manufacture, less labour
comes to be employed in raising and producing
it. If it is a foreign commodity of which
the tax increases in this manner the price, the
commodities of the same kind which are
made at home may thereby, indeed, gain
some advantage in the home market, and a
greater quantity of domestic industry may
thereby be turned toward preparing them.
But though this rise of price in a foreign
commodity, may encourage domestic industry
in one particular branch, it necessarily discourages
that industry in almost every other.
The dearer the Birmingham manufacturer
buys his foreign wine, the cheaper he necessarily
sells that part of his hardware with
which, or, what comes to the same thing,
with the price of which, he buys it. That
part of his hardware, therefore, becomes of
less value to him, and he has less encouragement
to work at it. The dearer the consumers
in one country pay for the surplus produce
of another, the cheaper they necessarily
sell that part of their own surplus produce
with which, or, what comes to the same thing,
with the price of which, they buy it. That
part of their own surplus produce becomes
of less value to them, and they have less encouragement
to increase its quantity. All
taxes upon consumable commodities, therefore,
tend to reduce the quantity of productive
labour below what it otherwise would be,
either in preparing the commodities taxed, if
they are home commodities, or in preparing
these with which they are purchased, if they
are foreign commodities. Such taxes, too, always
alter, more or less, the natural direction
of national industry, and turn it into a channel