THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

853

otherwise with goods subject to duties of excise. The dealershave no respite from the continual visits and examinationof the excise officers. The duties of excise are, upon thisaccount, more unpopular than those of the customs; and soare the officers who levy them. Those officers, it is pre-tended, though in general, perhaps, they do their duty fullyas well as those of the customs; yet, as that duty obligesthem to be frequently very troublesome to some of theirneighbours, commonly contract a certain hardiness of cha-racter which the others frequently have not. This observa-tion, however, may very probably be the mere suggestion offraudulent dealers, whose smuggling is either prevented ordetected by their diligence.

The inconveniencies, however, which are, perhaps, in somedegree inseparable from taxes upon consumable commodities,fall as light upon the people of Great Britain as upon thoseof any other country of which the government is nearly asexpensive. Our state is not perfect, and might be mended ;but it is as good or better than that of most of our neighbours.

In consequence of the notion that duties upon consumablegoods were taxes upon the profits of merchants, those dutieshave, in some countries, been repeated upon every succes-sive sale of the goods. If the profits of the merchant im-porter or merchant manufacturer were taxed, equality seemedto require that those of all the middle buyers, who intervenedbetween either of them and the consumer, should likewise betaxed. The famous iMcavala of Spain seems to have beenestablished upon this principle, it was at first a tax of teaper cent., afterward of fourteen per cent., and is at presentof only six per cent, upon the sale of every sort of property,whether mpveable or immoveable; and it is repeated everytime the property is sold.* The levying of this tax requiresa multitude of revenue officers sufficient to guard the trans-portation of goods, not only from one province to another,but from one shop to another. It subjects, not only thedealers in some sorts of goods, but those in all sorts, everyfarmer, every manufacturer, every merchant and shopkeeper,to the continual visits and examination of the tax-gatherers.Through the greater part of a country in which a tax of thiskind is established, nothing can be produced for distantsale. The produce of every part of the country must beproportioned to the consumption of the neighbourhood. It

* Meuioires oonccinnnt It's Droits, &c. lomc i. p, 45J.