This enables him to substitute for the exclusive excise which he formerly advocated a system of taxes whereby five-eighths of the amount required shall be levied upon the people and three-eighths upon the stock, land paying 21 per cent. of the whole, personal estates 6 per cent., and so on, in proportion to their several values. When this is done, no man will pay more than he ought or need, "which disproportion is the true and proper Grievance of taxes."
Whether we regard this as a formulation of the problem of justice in taxation or as an attempt at the comprehensive solution of that problem, it is entitled to high praise. Not before Adam Smith, perhaps, can another discussion of the subject be found so thorough and so well balanced as is Petty's.[1]
Out of his discussion of taxes proceeds his treatment of rent, the "mysterious nature" of which he thinks it well to explain before talking too much about its taxation. There have been intimations that Petty held a "correct" theory of rent.[2] It is well, therefore, to see just what his theory is. It is, first of all, a theory of agricultural rent. Accordingly, he distinguishes between "the natural and genuine Rent of Lands"[3] and their rent in gold or silver, between the "corn rent" and "money rent." The corn rent of agricultural lands, he says, is determined by the excess of their produce over the expenses of their cultiva-
- ↑ Certainly nothing to compare with it has been discovered by the researches of F. J. Neumann ("Die Steuer nach der Steuerfähigkeit," in Conrad's Jahrbücher (1880), xxxv. 511-578), Robert Meyer (Die gerechte Besteuerung (1884), 3-21), Hasbach ("Die Entwickelung der Finanzwissenschaft bis auf Adam Smith," in his Untersuchungen über Adam Smith (1891), 240-290), or Ricca-Salerno (Storia delle dottrine finanziarie (1896), 148-210).
- ↑ E.g., McCulloch's Literature of Political Economy, s. v., Ingram's History of Political Economy, p. 57. Dr. Bevan goes so far as to say (Sir William Petty: A Study, 98) that Petty "would quite agree with Ricardo's definition of rent as the payment for indestructible powers of the soil"!
- ↑ Political Anatomy of Ireland, 54; Writings, i. 174.
