81 C

TIIE NATUIiE AND CAUSES OF

Such taxes, even when they are proportioned to the valueof the property transferred, are still unequal; the frequencyof transference not being always equal in property of equalvalue. When they are not proportioned to this value, whichis the case with the greater part of the stamp-duties, andduties of registration, they are still more so. They are inno respect arbitrary, but are or may be in all cases perfectlyclear and certain. Though they sometimes fall upon theperson who is not very able to pay; the time of paymentis in most cases sufficiently convenient for him. Whenthe payment becomes due he must in most cases havethe money to pay. They are levied at very little expense,and in general subject the contributors to no other in-conveniency besides always the unavoidable one of payingthe tax.

In France the stamp duties are not much complained of.Those of registration, which they call the Controle, are.They give occasion, it is pretended, to much extortion in theofficers of the farmers-general who collect the tax, which isin a great measure arbitrary and uncertain. In the greaterpart of the libels which have been written against the pre-sent system of finances in France , the abuses of the Controlemake a principal article. Uncertainty, however, does notseem to be necessarily inherent in the nature of such taxes.If the popular complaints are well founded, the abuse mustarise, not so much from the nature of the tax, as from thewant of precision and distinctness in the words of the edictsor laws which impose it.

The registration of mortgages, and in general of all rightsupon immoveable property, as it gives great security both tocreditors and purchasers, is extremely advantageous to thepublic. That of the greater part of deeds of other kinds isfrequently inconvenient and even dangerous to individuals,without any advantage to the public. All registers which, itis acknowledged, ought to be secret, ought certainly never toexist. The credit of individuals ought certainly never to de-pend upon so very slender a security as the probity and reli-gion of the inferior officers of the revenue. But where feesof registration have been made a source of revenue to thesovereign, register offices have commonly been multipliedwithout end, both for the deeds which ought to be registered,and for those which ought not. In France , there are severaldifferent sorts of secret registers. This abuse, though not