other employments. The tax would be paid by all lands, by those which
yielded scantily as well as by those which yielded abundantly; and on
some lands there could be no compensation for it by deduction from rent,
for no rent is paid. A partial tax on profits never falls on the trade
on which it is laid, for the trader will either quit his employment, or
remunerate himself for the tax. Now those who pay no rent could be
recompensed only by a rise in the price of produce, and thus would M.
Say's proposed tax fall on the consumer, and not either on the landlord
or farmer.

If the proposed tax were increased in proportion to the increased
quantity, or value, of the gross produce obtained from the land, it
would differ in nothing from tithes, and would equally be transferred to
the consumer. Whether then it fell on the gross or on the net produce of
land, it would be equally a tax on consumption, and would only affect
the landlord and farmer in the same way as other taxes on raw produce.

If no tax whatever had been laid on the land, and the same sum had been
raised by any other means, agriculture would have flourished at least as
well as it has done; for it is impossible that any tax on land can be an
encouragement to agriculture; a moderate tax may not, and probably does
not, greatly prevent, but it cannot encourage production. The English
Government has held no such language as M. Say has supposed. It did not
promise to exempt the agricultural class and their successors from all
future taxation, and to raise the further supplies which the state
might require, from the other classes of society; it said only, "in this
mode we will no further burthen the land; but we retain to ourselves the
most perfect liberty of making you pay, under some other form, your full
quota to the future exigencies of the state."

Speaking of taxes in kind, or a tax of a certain proportion of the
produce, which is precisely the same as tithes, M. Say says, "This mode
of taxation appears to be the most equitable; there is however none
which is less so: it totally leaves out of consideration the advances
made by the producer; it is proportioned to the gross, and not to the
net revenue. Two agriculturists cultivate different kinds of raw
produce: one cultivates corn on middling land, his expenses amounting
annually on an average to 8000 francs; the raw produce from his lands
sells for 12,000 francs; he has then a net revenue of 4000 francs.

"His