n proportion to their respective profits; the farmer
being rated according to the actual productions which he obtains, the
manufacturer only according to the value of the buildings in which he
works, without any regard to the value of the machinery, labour, or
stock, which he may employ. From this circumstance it follows, that the
farmer will be enabled to raise the price of his produce by this whole
difference. For since the tax falls unequally, and peculiarly on his
profits, he would have less motive to devote his capital to the land,
than to employ it in some other trade, unless the price of raw produce
were raised. If on the contrary, the rate had fallen with greater weight
on the manufacturer than on the farmer, he would have been enabled to
raise the price of his goods by the amount of the difference, for the
same reason that the farmer, under similar circumstances, could raise
the price of raw produce. In a society therefore, which is extending its
agriculture, when poor rates fall with peculiar weight on the land, they
will be paid partly by the employers of capital in a diminution of the
profits of stock, and partly by the consumer of raw produce in its
increased price. In such a state of things, the tax may, under some
circumstances, be even advantageous rather than injurious to landlords;
for if the tax paid by the cultivator of the worst land, be higher in
proportion to the quantity of produce obtained, than that paid by the
farmers of the more fertile lands, the rise in the price of corn, which
will extend to all corn, will more than compensate the latter for the
tax. This advantage will remain with them during the continuance of
their leases, but it will afterwards be transferred to their landlords.
This then would be the effect of poor rates in an advancing society; but
in a stationary, or in a retrograde country, so far as capital could not
be withdrawn from the land, if a further rate were levied for the
support of the poor, that part of it which fell on agriculture would be
paid, during the current leases, by the farmers, but at the expiration
of those leases it would almost wholly fall on the landlords. The
farmer, who during his former lease, had expended his capital in
improving his land, if it were still in his own hands, would be rated
for this new tax according to the new value which the land had acquired
by its improvement, and this amount he would be obliged to pay during
his lease, although his