23 June 1801

Polit. Economy

Analysis D

Features

Encrease negative

Taxes

1

30

Encrease of wealth may be considered as /distinguished into/ either positive or

/and/ negative: negative consisting in the prevention of decrease.

Modes of negative encrease - 1. Preservation of individual articles against

unintended causes of deperition and decrease of quantity or value.

Such prevention may be either total or partial: it can only be partial, in cases

where decrease to a greater or less amount is indispensable, as in the case of

taxes.

Taxes are imposed to furnish means either for the future expenditure, or to

afford compensation to those who in times past have furnished the means for

expenditure which then was future: in other words for growing expences, or for

discharge of debts.

The amount of taxes imposed for growing expences takes from the amount of

national wealth in certain ways, and adds to it in other ways more or less

according as it is employ'd. It takes from the means or instruments of

enjoyment+ of those on whom the taxes are imposed: enjoyment present or future

immediate or more or less remote according as it would have been spent lent out

or hoarded had it not been for the tax.

it adds to the security of the whole in proportion as it is employ'd for the

purpose of national security in the way of National defence and otherwise: it

adds to the subsistence & enjoyments of a part, in proportion as it employ'd

/applied/ to those purposes by those among whom it is distributed in

consideration of the services by which they have respectively contributed to

that end.

+ This division must have preceded.