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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OK

the most upright council. The proportion which each parishought to support of what is assessed upon the whole election,and that which each individual ought to support of what isassessed upon his particular parish, are both in the samemanner varied, from year to year, according as circumstancesare supposed to require. These circumstances are judged of,in the one case, by the officers of the election ; in the other,by those of the parish ; and both the one and the other are,more or less, under the direction and influence of the inten-dant. Not only ignorance and misinformation, but friendship,party animosity, and private resentment, are said frequentlyto mislead such assessors. No man subject to such a tax, itis evident, can ever be certain, before he is assessed, of whathe is to pay. lie cannot even be certain after he is assessed.If any person has been taxed who ought to have been ex-empted ; or if any person has been taxed beyond his propor-tion, though both must pay in the mean time, yet if theycomplain, and make good their complaints, the whole parishis reimposed next year in order to reimburse them. If anyof the contributors become bankrupt or insolvent, the collectoris obliged to advance his tax, and the whole parish is reim-posed next year in order to reimburse the collector. If thecollector himself should become bankrupt, the parish whichelects him must answer for his conduct to the receiver-ge-neral of the election. But, as it might be troublesome for thereceiver to prosecute the whole parish, he takes at his choicefive or six of the richest contributors, and obliges them tomake good what had been lost by the insolvency of the col-lector. The parish is afterward reimposed in order to reim-burse those five or six. Such reimpositions are always overand above the taille of the particular year in which they arelaid on.

When a tax is imposed upon the profits of stock in a par-ticular branch of trade, the traders are all careful to bring nomore goods to market than what they can sell at a price suffi-cient to reimburse them for advancing the tax. Some of themwithdraw a part of their stocks from the trade, and the marketis more sparingly supplied than before. The price of thegoods rises, and the final payment of the tax falls upon theconsumer. But when a tax is imposed upon the profits ofstock employed in agriculture, it is not the interest of the.farmers to withdraw any part of their stock from that employ-ment. Each farmer occupies a certain quantity of land, for