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His assessment, therefore, must in most cases depend uponthe good or bad humour of his assessors, and must, therefore,be altogether arbitrary and uncertain.
Capitation taxes, if they are proportioned not to the sup-posed fortune, but to the rank of each contributor, becomealtogether unequal; the degrees of fortune being frequentlyunequal in the same degree of rank.
Such taxes, therefore, if it is attempted to render themequal, become altogether arbitrary and uncertain; and if itis attempted to render them certain and not arbitrary, becomealtogether unequal. Let the tax be light or heavy, uncer-tainty is always a great grievance. In a light tax, a consi-derable degree of inequality may be supported; in a heavyone, it is altogether intolerable.
In the different poll-taxes which took place in Englandduring the reign of William III . the contributors were, thegreater part of them, assessed according to the degree of theirrank; as dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons, esquires,gentlemen, the eldest and youngest sons of peers, &c. Allshopkeepers and tradesmen worth more than three hundredpounds, that is, the better sort of them, were subject to thesame assessment; how great soever might be the differencein their fortunes. Their rank was more considered than theirfortune. Several of those who in the first poll-tax were ratedaccording to their supposed fortune, were afterward ratedaccording to their rank. Serjeants, attorneys, and proctorsat law, who in the first poll-tax were assessed at three shil-lings in the pound of their supposed income, were afterwardassessed as gentlemen. In the assessment of a tax whichwas not very heavy, a considerable degree of inequality hadbeen found less insupportable than any degree of uncertainty.
In the capitation which has been levied in France withoutany interruption since the beginning of the present century,the highest orders of people are rated according to their rankby an invariable tariff; the lower orders of people, accordingto what is supposed to be their fortune, by an assessmentwhichvaries from year to year. The officers of the king’s court,the judges and other officers in the superior courts of justice,the officers of the troops, &c. arc assessed in the first manner.The inferior ranks of people in the provinces arc assessed inthesccond. In France the great easily submit to a considerabledegree of inequality in a tax which, so far as it affects them,is not a very heavy one; but could not brook the arbitrary