RICHARD JONES
AN ESSAY ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND ON THE SOURCES OF TAXATION
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AN ESSAY ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND ON THE SOURCES OF TAXATION
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,
M.DCCC.XXXI.
[1831]
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PREFACE.
The causes of the varying wealth and poverty of nations have naturally at all
times attracted the eager attention of mankind. For a long time, however, it was
thought that there was nothing in the subject very difficult to understand: that
the only way for a people to get rich was to procure money or bullion, and that
the only way to get poor was to part with them. The art of enriching nations
obviously consisted, therefore, in devising the means, first, of getting
possession of as much of the precious metals as possible, and then, of holding
them fast so as to keep the heap ever growing.
It is in the different measures, or rather systems of measures, successively
adopted to effect these purposes, that we must trace the rude but very decided
political economy of the ages which elapsed between the conquest of England and
the middle of the last century.
For some time, however, before this later period, there may be discerned,
meandering through the huge and obscure mass of our mercantile literature, a dim
line of twilight truth upon these subjects;a suspicion rather hinted at than
revealed, that after all, the accumulating gold and silver might not, when
nations were in question, be the only mode of increasing their real wealth. But
still it was not till Galiani in Italy, Harris in England, Quesnay in France,
and above all Smith in Scotland, had published their respective works, that it
became admitted to be an established principle, systematically examined and
demonstratively proved, that national wealth may consist not only of gold and
silver, but of all such things at least as men are content to give gold and
silver in exchange for.
The circumstances which encourage and make easy, or which discourage and
obstruct the production of wealth, taking this new and enlarged view of it,
became at once the objects of anxious enquiry and speculation. In this new path
Smith took the lead; and nothing which has been done since his time in this
direction, will bear a comparison with the results of his labors. But to those
engaged in the pursuit of this branch of political economy, another soon
presented itself. It was not possible to investigate carefully the circumstances
which affect the production of national wealth, without being struck by the
importance and influence of those which are connected with its distribution: and
attempts to discover the laws which determine the respective shares of the
landed proprietors, the owners of personal property, and the laborers, in the
annual produce, gave occasion to a great deal of research, or rather perhaps a
great deal of speculation. Such speculations were pursued the more earnestly,
when it was perceived, as it necessarily soon was, that the power of nations to
support and render productive peculiar forms of taxation, could be little
understood, till the laws were developed which determine the respective shares
of the various classes of a community in the wealth annually created.
But the labors of those who have treated of the principles which govern the
distribution of wealth, have as yet been rewarded by no such success as that
which has crowned the efforts of those who have investigated the circumstances
which influence the amount produced. On this last branch of the subject, much
knowledge has been accumulated, and principles have been established, important
both for theoretical and practical purposes, however difficult the application
of them to particular circumstances may sometimes be. These constitute a body of
political truths, in the solidity and permanence of which a majority of the
enlightened and reflecting part of mankind may be said to have acquiesced: while
attempts to explain the appointed course of the distribution of wealth, and to
unfold the laws which limit and determine rents, wages and profits, have
hitherto led to little besides contradictory opinions; and startling, and in
some instances, unhappily, disgusting and most mischievous paradoxes.
The germ of the doctrines of the earliest leading writers on these points, the
French economists, may be traced pretty clearly to some hasty, and certainly
very erroneous opinions, of our own great Locke. That sect of philosophers at
last fancied they could rigidly demonstrate, that a portion of the rent, (the
produit net,) constituted a peculiar fund, from which alone all the revenues of
the state must directly or indirectly be derived; and this strange and futile
dogma came from their hands based on reasonings and assumptions, from which it
appeared to result that the amount of wages, and the rate of profits, are
determined by causes which keep them beyond the reach of change, and preserve
them untouched amidst the workings of any possible scheme of taxation. Mixed
with some absurdities, and much rash and sophisticated reasoning, the writings
of the economists contain many truths; and some of a high order and lasting
importance: but even these could not save their reputation; and by being
interwoven in a mass of error, were for a time less current, and therefore less
useful, than they must otherwise have been. The system found, it is true, some
devoted and fanatical adherents; but in spite of the zeal of these supporters,
and of its own theoretical plausibility, the instinctive judgement of mankind
revolted from its strange conclusions; and by the great body of the reading
world, it was first derided, and then, except as occupying its spot in literary
history, forgotten. Smith attempted little on this part of his great subject,
and that little he did not do well: but his good sense lept him aloof from
absurdities, like those which disfigure the works of some who preceded, and of
many who have followed him: and the caution with which he shrunk from plunging
deep into the investigation, shews, perhaps, that he was conscious of
difficulties which he chose to avoid. Of him, however, it may be said with
truth, that he had done as much as could be expected from one mind, when he had
illustrated, applied, connected and multiplied the truths which before his time
existed insulated, and for the most part half developed, on one main branch of
his subject. That subject too we know was itself at once elevated by the success
of his work to a rank among the great objects of the intellectual efforts of
mankind, which it is little likely ever again to lose; and which, we must hope,
will, at some future day, ensure the developement of all its intricacies.
Mr. Malthus was the first philosopher, after Smith, who laid foundations for the
farther progre. of knowledge. The earliest distinct views of those laws which
govern the revenues of the landed proprietors, and the wages of the laborers in
the most advanced stages of civilization,(1) will always be to be traced in his
works on population, and on rent: and enough will remain to leave him the
character of a powerful and original enquirer after truth, when time and the
labors of many other minds have corrected some essential errors, and some hasty
extensions of principles,true in themselves, though of more local or limited
application, than amidst the fervor of discovery they appeared to their author
to be. But Mr. Malthus has been singularly unfortunate in his successors; under
their treatment, his works, instead of being made the foundations of a
superstructure of useful truth, have been used to give the semblance of
plausibility to a mass of error, ingenious and harmless in some of its parts,
but as a whole, most delusive, and unfortunately most mischievous.
On the subject of rent, Mr. Malthus, discarding the errors of the economists,
shewed satisfactorily, that where land is cultivated by capitalists living on
the profits of their stock, and able to move it at pleasure to other
employments, there the expence of tilling the worst quality of land cultivated
determines the average price of raw produce, while the difference of quality on
the superior lands measures the rents yielded by them.
This was a step towards understanding the circumstances which affect the
progress of a very limited division of rents, and the causes which in one very
peculiar state of society determine the average prices of raw produce. Mr.
Ricardo, however, overlooking altogether the limited extent of the field to
which these principles were really applicable, undertook from them alone to
deduce the laws which regulate the nature and amount of the revenue derived from
land at all places, and under all circumstances; and not content with this,
proceeded from the same narrow and limited data, to construct a general system
of the distribution of wealth, and to explain the causes of variations which
take place in the rate of profits, or amount of wages over the surface of ...
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