on all trades, every
commodity would be raised in price. But if the mine, which supplied us
with the standard of our money, were in this country, and the profits of
the miner were also taxed, the price of no commodity would rise, each
man would give an equal proportion of his income, and every thing would
be as before.

If money be not taxed, and therefore be permitted to preserve its value,
whilst every thing else is taxed, and is raised in value, the hatter,
the farmer, and clothier, each employing the same capitals, and
obtaining the same profits, will pay the same amount of tax. If the tax
be 100_l._, the hats, the cloth, and the corn, will each be increased in
value 100_l._ If the hatter gain by his hats 1100_l._, instead of
1000_l._, he will pay 100_l._ to Government for the tax; and therefore
will still have 1000_l._ to lay out on goods for his own consumption.
But as the cloth, corn, and all other commodities, will be raised in
price from the same cause, he will not obtain more for his 1000_l._ than
he before obtained for 910_l._, and thus will he contribute by his
diminished expenditure to the exigencies of the state; he will, by the
payment of the tax, have placed a portion of the produce of the land and
labour of the country at the disposal of Government, instead of using
that portion himself. If instead of expending his 1000_l._, he adds it
to his capital, he will find in the rise of wages, and in the increased
cost of the raw material and machinery, that his saving of 1000_l._ does
not amount to more than a saving of 910_l._ amounted to before.

If money be taxed, or if by any other cause its value be altered, and
all commodities remain precisely at the same price as before, the
profits of the manufacturer and farmer will also be the same as before,
they will continue to be 1000_l._; and as they will each have to pay
100_l._ to Government, they will retain only 900_l._, which will give
them a less command over the produce of the land and labour of the
country, whether they expend it in productive or unproductive labour.
Precisely what they lose, Government will gain. In the first case the
contributor to the tax would, for 1000_l._, have as great a quantity of
goods as he before had for 910_l._; in the second, he would have only as
much as he before had for 900_l._ This proceeds from the difference in
the amount of the tax; in the first case it is only an eleventh of his
income, in the second it is a tenth;