An increase of taxation tends to raise the wages of labour, and, where it does so in due proportion, the labourer pays almost nothing; he still for all that seems to pay, and he has the same disagreeable feeling [end of page #105] as if he did pay. No feeling is more disagreeable than that of being obliged, after earning money that can ill be spared, to pay it away to a surly tax-gatherer, who treats a man and his family with insolence, while he receives the money that should purchase them bread. Besides this, though the prices of many articles keep pace with the wages of labour, yet many others do not. Thus, in a country where wages are rapidly altering, though some are bettered by it, penury is entailed on others, who have not the means of raising their prices. If heavy taxes are levied on a few articles of consumption, then they become inefficient, and if they are divided amongst a great many, they become troublesome, so that either way they are attended with inconvenience and difficulty. In every country, where taxation has been carried to a great height, it has, at last, become necessary to bear heavily upon personal property. Such taxes are always attended with disagreeable feelings, and peculiar inconveniency. The tax always comes in the form of a debt, and whether convenient to be paid or not, it admits at best but of little delay. {90} In England the nature of the government, the disposition of the people, and the same sort of genius that made them succeed in commercial intercourse and regulation, led them to adopt the least objectionable modes of taxation. The customs were the first great branch of revenue at the time of the revolution. The excise, land-tax, and stamps, rose next, none of which can be objected to; for the person who pays the tax to government only advances the money, and is reimbursed by the consumer, who, again on his part, when he really pays the tax (for good and all) does it under the form of an advance in price. Thus, then, the tax is disguised to him that really pays it, and it is optional, inasmuch as he --- {90} It will be seen, in a future part of this work, that the farmers have lost nothing, but rather got by the high prices of grain in this country, and it is so probably in all others. Those who sell necessaries raise the price; those who make or sell superfluities have no such resource, and therefore pay in the severest manner. -=- [end of page #106] may avoid the tax, by not consuming the article. He never can be sued for the tax, and he pays it by degrees, as he can spare the money. {91}