this kind imposed during the currency of a lease may, no doubt, distress or ruin the farmer. Upon the renewal of the lease, it must always fall upon the landlord.

In the countries where the personal taille takes place, the farmer is commonly assessed in proportion to the stock which he appears to employ in cultivation. He is, upon this account, frequently afraid to have a good team of horses or oxen, but endeavours to cultivate with the meanest and most wretched instruments of husbandry that he can. Such is his distrust in the justice of his assessors, that he counterfeits poverty, and wishes to appear scarce able to pay anything, for fear of being obliged to pay too much. By this miserable policy he does not, perhaps, always consult his own interest in the most effectual manner, and he probably loses more by the diminution of his produce than he saves by that of his tax. Though, in consequence of this wretched cultivation, the market is, no doubt, somewhat worse supplied, yet the small rise of price which this may occasion, as it is not likely even to indemnify the farmer for the diminution of his produce, it is still less likely to enable him to pay more rent to the landlord. The public, the farmer, the landlord, all suffer more or less by this degrading cultivation. That the personal taille tends, in many different ways, to discourage cultivation, and consequently to dry up the principal source of the wealth of every great country, I have already had occasion to observe in the Third Book of this Inquiry.'

What are called poll-taxes in the southern provinces of North America and in the West Indian islands (annual taxes of so much a head upon every negro) are properly taxes upon the profits of a certain species of stock employed in agriculture. As the planters are, the greater part of them, both farmers and landlords, the final payment of the tax falls upon them in their quality of landlords without any retribution.

Taxes of so much a head upon the bondmen employed in cultivation seem anciently to have been common all over Europe. There subsists at present a tax of this kind in the empire of Russia. It is probably upon this account that poll-taxes of all kinds have often been represented as badges of slavery. Every tax, however, is to

1 Book III. chap. ii.

2 For the celebrated poll-tax of 1381,

which was reputed to have been the proximate cause of Tyler's rebellion, sce

the person person who pays it a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master. A poll-tax upon slaves is altogether different from a poll-tax upon freemen. The latter is paid by the persons upon whom it is imposed; the former by a different set of persons. The latter is either altogether arbitrary or altogether unequal, and in most cases is both the one and the other; the former, though in some respects unequal, different slaves being of different values, is in no respect arbitrary. Every master who knows the number of his own slaves, knows exactly what he has to pay. Those different taxes, however, being called by the same name, have been considered as of the same nature.

The taxes which in Holland are imposed upon men and maid servants, are taxes, not upon stock, but upon expense, and so far resemble the taxes upon consumable commodities. The tax of a guinea a head for every man servant, which has lately been imposed in Great Britain, is of the same kind. It falls heaviest upon the middling rank. A man of two hundred a year may keep a single man servant; a man of ten thousand a year will not keep fifty. It does not affect the poor.1

Taxes upon the profits of stock in particular employments can never affect the interest of money. Nobody will lend his money for less interest to those who exercise the taxed, than to those who exercise the untaxed employments. Taxes upon the revenue arising from stock in all employments, where the Government attempts to levy them with any degree of exactness, will, in many cases, fall upon the interest of money. The Vingtième, or twentieth penny, in France, is a tax of the same kind with what is called the landtax in England, and is assessed, in the same manner, upon the revenue arising from land, houses, and stock. So far as it affects

the Editor's Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. chap. iv. p. 84. Poll-taxes, at a uniform rate of a dollar a head for adults, are still levied in some of the States constituting the American Union.

In so far as the assessed tax (to be changed after the present year, 1869, into a licence) discourages the employment of male servants, it is an impost which indirectly affects the poor. But it has other implied inconveniences. There is probably no process which can be made

to confer greater assistance towards humanising or refining the manners of the poorer classes than the relations of master and servant, when these relations are carried out with mutual honour, good faith, and justice. The influence of domestic service on women is generally good. The attendance of common soldiers on officers in a regiment has similar beneficial effects upon men who are generally taken from the poorest and least refined ranks of society.

stock, it is assessed, though not with great rigour, yet with much more exactness than that part of the land-tax of England which is imposed upon the same fund. It, in many cases, falls altogether upon the interest of money. Money is frequently sunk in France upon what are called Contracts for the constitution of a rent; that is, perpetual annuities redeemable at any time by the debtor upon repayment of the sum originally advanced, but of which this redemption is not exigible by the creditor except in particular cases. The Vingtième seems not to have raised the rate of those annuities, though it is exactly levied upon them all.

APPENDIX TO ARTICLES. I. AND II.

Taxes upon the capital Value of Land, Houses, and Stock.

While property remains in the possession of the same person, whatever permanent taxes may have been imposed upon it, they have never been intended to diminish or take away any part of its capital value, but only some part of the revenue arising from it. But when property changes hands, when it is transmitted either from the dead to the living, or from the living to the living, such taxes have frequently been imposed upon it as necessarily take away some part of its capital value.

The transference of all sorts of property from the dead to the living, and that of immoveable property, of lands and houses, from the living to the living, are transactions which are in their nature either public and notorious, or such as cannot be long concealed. Such transactions, therefore, may be taxed directly. The transference of stock, or moveable property, from the living to the living, by the lending of money, is frequently a secret transaction, and may always be made so. It cannot easily, therefore, be taxed directly. It has been taxed indirectly in two different ways: first, by requiring that the deed, containing the obligation to repay, should be written upon paper or parchment which had paid a certain stamp-duty, otherwise not to be valid; secondly, by requiring, under the like penalty of invalidity, that it should be recorded either in a public or secret register, and by imposing certain duties upon such registration. Stamp-duties and duties of registration have frequently been imposed likewise upon the deeds transferring property of all kinds

from the dead to the living, and upon those transferring immoveable property from the living to the living-transactions which might easily have been taxed directly.

The Vicesima Hereditatum, the twentieth penny of inheritances, imposed by Augustus upon the ancient Romans, was a tax upon the transference of property from the dead to the living. Dion Cassius,* the author who writes concerning it the least indistinctly, says, that it was imposed upon all successions, legacies, and donations, in case of death, except upon those to the nearest relations, and to the poor.

Of the same kind is the Dutch tax upon successions.† Collateral successions are taxed, according to the degree of relation, from five to thirty per cent. upon the whole value of the succession. Testamentary donations, or legacies to collaterals, are subject to the like duties. Those from husband to wife, or from wife to husband, to the fiftieth penny. The Luctuosa Hereditas, the mournful succession of ascendants to descendants, to the twentieth penny only. Direct successions, or those of descendants to ascendants, pay no tax. The death of a father, to such of his children as live in the same house with him, is seldom attended with any increase, and frequently with a considerable diminution of revenue; by the loss of his industry, of his office, or of some life-rent estate, of which he may have been in possession. That tax would be cruel and oppressive which aggravated their loss by taking from them any part of his succession. It may, however, sometimes be otherwise with those children who, in the language of the Roman law, are said to be emancipated; in that of the Scotch law, to be foris-familiated; that is, who have received their portion, have got families of their own, and are supported by funds separate and independent of those of their father. Whatever part of his succession might come to such children, would be a real addition to their fortune, and might, therefore, perhaps, without more inconveniency than what attends all duties of this kind, be liable to some tax.1

Lib. 55. See also Burman de Vectigalibus pop. Rom. cap. xi., and Bouchaud de l'Impôt du vingtième sur les successions.

+ Mémoires concernant les Droits, &c. tom. i. p. 225.

Up to the 36th Geo. III (1796) no duty was paid on wills and legacies. But at that time Pitt was constrained, for purposes of revenue, to levy an ad valorem

tax on property passing under will, or on the estates of intestate persons, the tax being higher in the latter than in the former case. Besides this initiatory tax, another was paid on legacies, the rate varying with the proximity of blood between the devisor and legatee. This variation might have been adopted on the principle of the Dutch law adverted to in the text, since the Dutch are re

The casualties of the feudal law were taxes upon the transference of land, both from the dead to the living, and from the living to the living. In ancient times, they constituted in every part of Europe one of the principal branches of the revenue of the Crown.

The heir of every immediate vassal of the Crown paid a certain duty, generally a year's rent, upon receiving the investiture of the estate. If the heir was a minor, the whole rents of the estate, during the continuance of the minority, devolved to the superior without any other charge, besides the maintenance of the minor and the payment of the widow's dower, when there happened to be a dowager upon the land. When the minor came to be of age, another tax, called Relief, was still due to the superior, which generally amounted likewise to a year's rent. A long minority (which in the present times so frequently disburdens a great estate of all its incumbrances, and restores the family to their ancient splendour) could in those times have no such effect. The waste, and not the disincumbrance of the estate, was the common effect of a long minority.1

By the feudal law, the vassal could not alienate without the consent of his superior, who generally extorted a fine or composition for granting it. This fine, which was at first arbitrary, came in many countries to be regulated at a certain portion of the price of the land. In some countries, where the greater part of the other feudal

ported to have been the fathers of modern finance. But there is a further reason for the variability of the tax. Had a high rate been levied on relations in the ascending or descending line, a direct stimulus would have been given to donationes inter viros.

Pitt could not persuade the landowners, who were of course absolute in the Houses of Parliament, into extending the probate and legacy duty to their own estates. Hence land or real property was exempted from these Acts. In 1853, however, landed estate was made liable to a moderate succession duty. It is not liable to probate duty, and the legatee or successor does not pay on the value of the estate which he inherits, but on a calculation of the time during which, at his age, he is likely to enjoy the estate. The unfairness of this exemption from public burdens has been often severely commented on.

For the incidents by which the estates of military tenants were affected, see

Blackstone's first book, and Gilbert's Feudal Tenures. During the Protectorate, a land-tax was substituted in place of these incidents. At the Restoration, the Court of Wards and Liveries was revised, as it had not been abolished by any legal statute. The inconvenience, however, of this court was so great that Parliament resolved to convert military service into common socage. But it did not emancipate the copyholders, and instead of assessing a land-tax on the military tenants, equal in amount to the average receipts of the Exchequer from this service, it compensated the Crown for its loss of revenue by imposing the excise on the general public.

2 By the statute Quia emptores, 18th Edw. I, the tenants of a nanor could alienate without the consent of their superior lord. It is generally alleged that this enactment was made in order to prevent subinfeudation, the statute declaring that the alience should hold of