Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/129

102 in keeping up in your nation the prejudice you have called "The Jealousy of Trade." It would be a great misfortune for the two nations. I believe, however, the almost equal exhaustion on both sides will prevent this folly from being long maintained.

. . . I highly approve of your prize; yet why so much restrict the essays of the competitors, by assuming, as a recognized truth, that all taxes fall on the proprietors of land? You know that no government of any age or country has ever relied on this hypothesis: it has always been supposed that taxes fell on those who paid them upon consuming the products; and this universal rule, added to the evident appearance of things, at any rate leaves some room for doubt. Perhaps it would not have been bad to set that very question itself as the subject of discussion.

I don't know why you have thought that those who would like to maintain that indirect taxation is favourable to the proprietors of landed estates will be excluded from competing for my prize. I assure you that if you will give us an essay looking at the question from that point of view, it will be very well received. It is true that the instructions seem to direct authors to look at it from another. But the fact is I have offered the prize rather to get people to see what they can do in the way of estimating the effects of indirect taxation,—for I am still uncertain how the exact share (of