THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

819

occasioned a proportionable rise in those wages, it is becausethey have generally occasioned a considerable fall in the de-mand for labour. The declension of industry, the decreaseof employment for the poor, the diminution of the annualproduce of the land and labour of the country, have gene-rally been the effects of such taxes. In consequence of them,however, the price of labour must always be higher than itotherwise would have been in the actual state of the demand:and this enhancement of price, together with the profit ofthose who advance it, must always be finally paid by thelandlords and consumers.

A tax upon the wages of country labour does not raise theprice of the rude produce of land in proportion to the tax ;for the same reason that a tax upon the fanner’s profit doesnot raise that price in that proportion.

Absurd and destructive as such taxes are, however, theytake place in many countries. In France that part of thetaille which is charged upon the industry of workmen andday-labourers in country villages, is properly a tax of thiskind. Their wages are computed according to the commonrate of the district in which they reside, and that they may beas little liable as possible to any over-charge, their yearlygains are estimated at no more than two hundred workingdays in the year.* The tax of each individual is varied fromyear to year according to different circumstances, of whichthe collector or the commissary, whom the intendant appointsto assist him, are the judges. In Bohemia , in consequenceof the alteration in the system of finances which was begunin 1748, a very heavy tax is imposed upon the industry ofartificers. They are divided into four classes. The highestclasss pay a hundred florins a year; which, at two-and-twenty pence halfpenny a florin, amounts to 9/. 7.v. G d. Thesecond class are taxed at seventy ; the third at fifty; and thefourth, comprehending artificers in villages, and the lowestclass of those in towns, at twenty-live llorins. j’

The recompense of ingenious artists and of men of liberalprofessions, 1 have endeavoured to shew in the first book, ne-cessarily keeps a certain proportion to the emoluments of in-ferior trades. A tax upon this recompense, therefore, couldhave no otl^r effect than to raise it somewhat higher than inproportion to the tax. If it did not rise in this manner, the

• Memuircs concernant les Droits, &c, tom. ii. p, 108.t Id. tom. iii. p, 87,