Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/353

Rh the people themselves shall hardly know they pay them. For this purpose it is of the utmost consequence that the person who sells the merchandize should pay the duty. He is very sensible that he does not pay it for himself; and the consumer who pays it in the main, confounds it with the price. Some authors have observed that Nero had abolished the duty of the five and twentieth part arising from the sale of slaves ; and yet he had only ordained that it should be paid by the seller instead of the purchaser: this regulation, which left the impost intire, seemed nevertheless to suppress it.

There are two states in Europe where there are very heavy imports upon liquors; in one the brewer alone pays the duty, in the other it is levied indiscriminately upon all the consumers: in the first no body feels the rigor of the impost, in the second it is looked upon as a grievance. In the former the subject is sensible only of the liberty he has of not paying, in the latter he feels only the necessity that compels him to pay.

Farther, the obliging the consumers to pay, requires a perpetual rummaging and searching into their houses. Now nothing is more contrary than this to liberty; and those who establish these sorts of duties, have not surely been so happy in this respect, as to hit upon the best method of administration. Rh