2. In the next place, the taxes of the empire were by no means at first of such weight as to account, if there had been nothing else in the case, for the decay of its industry. The tax on inheritances, it has been shown, was at first five, afterwards ten _per cent_; and the land-tax was ten _per cent_ on the produce. The former tax of ten _per cent_ on successions, is the present legacy-tax on movable succession to persons not related to the deceased, in England; and ten _per cent_ on the produce, is the tithe, and no more than the tithe, which has so long existed in the European monarchies, and even when coexisting with many other and more oppressive burdens, has nowhere proved fatal to industry. Income of every sort paid ten _per cent_ in Great Britain during the war--the land paid the tithe and poor's-rate in addition--and the other taxes yielded a sum four times as great; yet industry of every kind flourished to an extraordinary degree during that struggle. Ever since the termination of the Revolution, the land-tax in France has been far heavier than it was in Rome, varying, according to the _Cadastre_, or valuation, from fifteen to twenty-five _per cent_; but yet it is well known public wealth and agricultural produce have increased in an extraordinary degree during that period. It was not, therefore, the weight of the impositions, but the simultaneous circumstances, which rendered the northern provinces of the empire _unable to bear them_, which was the real cause of the ruin of its industry.