Also read Codes of Conduct Nature Of The Government In every country, where taxation has been carried to a great height, it has, at last, become necessary to bear heavily upon personal property. Such taxes are always attended with disagreeable feelings, and peculiar inconveniency. The tax always comes in the form of a debt, and whether convenient to be paid or not, it admits at best but of little delay. In England the nature of the government, the disposition of the people, and the same sort of genius that made them succeed in commercial intercourse and regulation, led them to adopt the least objectionable modes of taxation. The customs were the first great branch of revenue at the time of the revolution. The excise, land-tax, and stamps, rose next, none of which can be objected to; for the person who pays the tax to government only advances the money, and is reimbursed by the consumer, who, again on his part, when he really pays the tax (for good and all) does it under the form of an advance in price. Thus, then, the tax is disguised to him that really pays it, and it is optional, inasmuch as he may avoid the tax, by not consuming the article. He never can be sued for the tax, and he pays it by degrees, as he can spare the money It will be seen, in a future part of this work, that the farmers have lost nothing, but rather got by the high prices of grain in this country, and it is so probably in all others. Those who sell necessaries raise the price; those who make or sell superfluities have no such resource, and therefore pay in the severest manner. Some time before the taxation which the American war rendered necessary, it was thought that the customs and excise could not be carried much farther. Ministers did not choose to venture on an additional tax on land, and, consequently, stamps were augmented and extended, as were also duties on windows. A variety of new taxes on particular articles of consumption were resorted to. Those sort of taxes harassed and tormented individuals more than they filled the treasury, yet still, when, after an interval of a few years of peace, new burdens became necessary, in 1793, the same plan was pursued, till it was found ineffectual, being too troublesome and tedious, besides being unequal to the increase of expenditure. It was necessity that suggested a plan, which is the simplest and easiest of any, so long as it succeeds and is productive. To increase the excise and customs by an additional five or ten per cent. on the articles that were supposed able to bear it. This has been done again and again with those two branches of revenue, and with the stamps likewise. But the necessities of the state still outrun the means, and the assessed taxes, the worst and most obnoxious of all, were augmented in the same way; but even those were not productive. The inducement to privation was too great, and the restraints laid on expenditure, suggested the adoption of a tax on income; that is, on the means a man has to pay, which carries in its very name a description of its nature. We have mentioned the influence that necessity has on industry. One of the effects of taxes, as well as of rent, is to prolong the operation of necessity, or to increase it. A man who has neither rent nor taxes to pay, as is the case in some savage nations, only labours to supply his wants. Whatever proportion rent and taxes bear to the wants of a people their industry will be increased in the same proportion, unless their forces are exceeded, and then the operation is indeed very different.