THE W E A I,'I'll OF NATIONS.

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funds which might enable them more easily to do so. Thirdly,by the forfeitures and other penalties which those unfortunateindividuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully to evade the tax,it may frequently ruin them, and thereby put an end to thebenefit which the community might have received from theemployment of their capitals. An injudicious tax offers agreat temptation to smuggling. But the penalties of smug-gling must rise in proportion to the temptation. The law,contrary to all the ordinary principles of justice, first createsthe temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it; andit commonly enhances the punishment too in proportion tothe very circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it,the temptation to commit the crime.* Fourthly, by subject-ing the people to the frequent visits and the odious examina-tion of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to much unne-cessary trouble, vexation, and oppression; and though vexationis not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly equivalent tothe expense at which every man would be willing to redeemhimself from it. It is in some one or other of these four dif-ferent ways that taxes are frequently so much more burden-some to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign.

The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maximshave recommended them more or less to the attention of allnations. All nations have endeavoured, to the best of theirjudgment, to render their taxes as equal as they could con-trive; as certain, as convenient to the contributor, both inthe time and in the mode of payment, and in proportion tothe revenue which they brought to the prince, as little bur-densome to the people. The following short review of someof the principal taxes which have taken place in differentages and countries will skew, that the endeavours of all na-tions have not in this respect been equally successful.

ARTICLE I.

Taxes upon Bent. Taxes upon the Rent of Land.

A tax upon the rent of land may either be imposed ac-cording to a certain canon, every district being valued at acertain rent, which valuation is not afterward to be altered;or it may be imposed in such a manner as to vary with everyvariation in the real rent of the land, and to rise or fall withthe improvement or declension of its cultivation.

* Sec Sketches of the History of Man, page 471, et sen,

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