Page:Observations on the present financial embarassments.djvu/15

11 what taxes it might be expedient to repeal. Precisely, then, for the same reason that I consider the repeal of the assessed taxes would do no good, because it would merely transfer wealth from one portion of the nation to the other, and not increase the aggregate amount of the national wealth, do I consider that the repeal of taxes on raw materials would prove highly beneficial, because its effects would be general in their operation; and because it would directly tend to increase the wealth of the community at large. How such effects would be produced, let us now proceed to inquire.

First, then, I maintain, that, by taxing raw materials, you directly lessen the capital of the country. Sir H. Parnell remarks, in his late able work on Finance:—"As the power of the manufacturing capital of a country, to purchase raw materials, is in proportion to their cheapness, and as the extent of manufactures is in proportion to the quantity of materials that are purchased, every particle of duty laid on them lessens the amount of industry, and of annual productions. It consequently lessens the means of adding to the national capital, because these means consist of the surplus of the annual deductions of the country." In proportion, then to the extent of taxation on raw materials, is the capital of the country diminished.

But there is another view of the case, to which