always different from, and generally less
advantageous, than that in which is would
have run of its own accord.
Thirdly, the hope of evading such taxes by
smuggling, gives frequent occasion to forfeitures
and other penalties, which entirely
ruin the smuggler; a person who, though no
doubt highly blameable for violating the laws
of his country, is frequently incapable of violating
those of natural justice, and would
have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen,
had not the laws of his country made
that a crime which nature never meant to be
so. In those corrupted governments, where
there is at least a general suspicion of much
unnecessary expense, and great misapplication
of the public revenue, the laws which
guard it are little respected. Not many people
are scrupulous about smuggling, when,
without perjury, they can find an easy and
safe opportunity of doing so. To pretend to
have any scruple about buying smuggled
goods, though a manifest encouragement to
the violation of the revenue laws, and to the
perjury which almost always attends it, would,
in most countries, be regarded as one of those
pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of
gaining credit with anybody, serve only to
expose the person who affects to practise them
to the suspicion of being a greater knave
than most of his neighbours. By this indulgence
of the public, the smuggler is often
encouraged to continue a trade, which he is
thus taught to consider as in some measure
innocent; and when the severity of the revenue
laws is ready to fall upon him, he is
frequently disposed to defend with violence,
what he has been accustomed to regard as his
just property. From being at first, perhaps,
rather imprudent than criminal, he at last too
often becomes one of the hardiest and most
determined violators of the laws of society.
By the ruin of the smuggler, his capital,
which had before been employed in maintaining
productive labour, is absorbed either
in the revenue of the state, or in that of the
revenue officer; and is employed in maintaining
unproductive, to the diminution of the
general capital of the society, and of the useful
industry which it might otherwise have
maintained.
Fourthly, such taxes, by subjecting at least
the dealers in the taxed commodities, to the
frequent visits and odious examination of the
tax-gatherers, expose them sometimes, no
doubt, to some degree of oppression, and always
to much trouble and vexation; and
though vexation, as has already been said, is
not strictly speaking expense, it is certainly
equivalent to the expense at which every man
would be willing to redeem himself from it.
The laws of excise, though more effectual for
the purpose for which they were instituted,
are, in this respect, more vexatious than those
of the customs. When a merchant has imparted
goods subject to certain duties of customs;
when he has paid those duties, and
lodged the goods in his warehouse; he is not,
in most cases, liable to any further trouble or
vexation from the custom-house officer. It is
otherwise with goods subject to duties of excise.
The dealers have no respite from the
continual visits and examination of the excise
officers. The duties of excise are, upon this
account, more unpopular than those of the
customs; and so are the officers who levy
them. Those officers, it is pretended, though
in general, perhaps, they do their duty fully
as well as those of the customs; yet, as that
duty obliges them to be frequently very troublesome
to some of their neighbours, commonly
contract a certain hardness of character,
which the others frequently have not.
This observation, however, may very probably
be the mere suggestion of fraudulent dealers,
whose smuggling is either prevented or
detected by their diligence.
The inconveniencies, however, which are,
perhaps, in some degree inseparable from
taxes upon consumable commodities, fall as
light upon the people of Great Britain as upon
those of any other country of which the
government is nearly as expensive. Our
state is not perfect, and might be mended;
but it is as good, or better, than that of most
of our neighbours.
In consequence of the notion, that duties
upon consumable goods were taxes upon
the profits of merchants, those duties have, in
some countries, been repeated upon every successive
sale of the goods. If the profits of
the merchant-importer or merchant-manufacturer
were taxed, equality seemed to require
that those of all the middle buyers, who intervened
between either of them and the consumer,
should likewise be taxed. The famous
alcavala of Spain seems to have been established
upon this principle. It was at first a tax
of ten per cent, afterwards of fourteen per
cent. and it is at present only six per cent.
upon the sale of every sort of property, whether
moveable or immoveable; and it is repeated
every time the property is sold.[75] The levying
of this tax requires a multitude of revenue
officers, sufficient to guard the transportation
of goods, not only from one province to
another, but from one shop to another. It
subjects, not only the dealers in some sorts of
goods, but those in all sorts, every farmer,
every manufacturer, every merchant and shopkeeper,
to the continual visit and examination
of the tax-gatherers. Through the greater
part of the country in which a tax of this kind
is established, nothing can be produced for
distant sale. The produce of every part of the
country must be proportioned to the consumption
of the neighbourhood. It is to the alcavala,
accordingly, that Ustaritz imputes the ruin
of the manufactures of Spain. He might have