the land: for besides merchants properly so called, I include in this class all the shopkeepers and notable tradesmen of every kind. Now it is very just that these should pay for the maintenance of the community,—and this cannot be brought about unless the taxes are placed upon consumption. It seems to me that there is no warrant for saying that this class of taxpayers is compelled to shift its taxes upon the landed proprietors; for its profits[1] and its revenues can certainly bear a deduction.
5. Turgot to Hume, March 25, 1767.
I should very much have liked to enter into some detail on the subject of taxation; but to reply to your objections it would have been necessary, so to speak, to write a book and earn my own prize. I will only indicate to you the principle from which I set out, and which I believe incontestable: it is, that there is no other revenue possible in a State than the sum of the annual productions of the land; that the total mass of these productions falls into two parts: one set aside for[2] the reproduction of the following year, which comprises not only the portion of the crops that the undertakers of agriculture consume in kind, but also all they use to pay the wages of the workmen of every kind who labour for them: blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, weavers, tailors &c; it includes, also, their profits and the interests upon their advances. The other part is the net produce, which the farmer pays over to the proprietor, when the person of the latter is distinguished from that of the culti-
