Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/239

Rh who pays it. The buyer compares the money that he spends with the advantage that he gains, and this comparison determines it. If he did not make money out of it he would not buy it. When the registration tax did not exist, the purchaser had to pay the same sum for the same purpose, and this sum went into the pocket of the seller."

"Proprietors of lands, then, after all, have to bear the mutation taxes. All increase of these taxes is a loss for them, and these taxes are heavier on the small proprietors than on the large, because their changes are more frequent. The tax on the farms, on the contrary, would bear more heavily on large estates."

"The tax on farms not affecting the owners of timber, would be made up by a tax on the felling, a very justifiable tax, for standing timber is landed property. Standing timber is often worth much more than the land on which it stands."

Finally, we will give some thoughts which reveal the religious sentiments of Sadi Carnot:

"Men attribute to chance those events of the causes of which they are ignorant. If they succeed in divining these causes, chance disappears. To say that a thing has happened by chance,