Page:Thoughts on the causes and consequences of the present high price of provisions.djvu/13

[ 5 ] tanner, leather-dresser, and shoemaker, which is not a little, must be refunded. No tax is immediately laid upon corn, but the price of it must necessarily be advanced; because, out of that, all the innumerable taxes paid by the farmer on windows, soap, candles, malt, hops, leather, salt, and a thousand others, must be repaid: so that corn is as effectually taxed, as if a duty by the bushel had been primarily laid upon it; for taxes, like the various streams which form a general inundation, by whatever channels they separately find admission, unite at last, and overwhelm the whole. The man, therefore, who sold sand upon an ass, and raised the price of it during the late war, though abused for an imposition, most certainly acted upon right reasons; for, though there were no new taxes then imposed either on sand or asses, yet he found by experience, that, from the taxes laid on almost all other things, he could neither maintain himself, his wife,