An Inquiry Into The Expediency Of Applying The Principles Of Colonial Policy To The Government Of India [electronic Resource]

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1822 Excerpt: ... 102 CHAPTER IV. STATISTICAL VIEW OF THE TERRITORIAL SYSTEM. Where a land-tax is so divided as to affect only the farmers' profits, and not the landlords' rents, there must always remain a large amount of private income derived from land, in the hands of a powerful body of proprietors, which can only be reached by those taxes on expenditure which fall indiscriminately on all incomes. Taxes on raw produce, without disturbing the general level of profits, are diffused among the community in proportion to each person's consumption, and have no natural limit but their tendency to discourage production, a limit which would be distinctly indicated by a decrease in their productiveness. But, for a tax on rent the landlords receive no remuneration by increase of rents; and if such a tax were indefinitely aggravated, it would destroy the landed aristocracy, and convert them into mere agents for collecting the land-tax, and paying it into the exchequer. That such a state of things might be produced, in England, by the boundless accumulation of national debt, Hume has endeavoured to show in his essay on public credit; but the possibility of the occurrence of this unnatural state of society may be more easily disputed than the probability of the subversion of the constitution, which he has described as its inevitable consequence. We cannot suppose the land to be taxed eighteen or nineteen shillings in the pound, without supposing that the members of the legislature would pass an ordinance of self-condemnation. We may be sure, therefore, that neither in England nor in any part of civilized Europe, will the progress of taxation ever be able to absorb any considerable portion of the landlords' rents. But what, in Britain, the unmitigated action of so powerful an engi...