When the demand is
equal to the quantity of goods at market, the consumer generally pays
the duty; but when the markets happen to be overstocked, a great
proportion falls upon the merchant, and sometimes not only exhausts his
profits, but breaks in upon his capital. I am apt to think that a
division of the duty, between the seller and the buyer, more often
happens than is commonly imagined. It is not always possible to raise
the price of a commodity in exact proportion to every additional
imposition laid upon it. The merchant, especially in a country of small
commercial capital, is often under a necessity of keeping prices down in
order to a more expeditious sale.
The maxim that the consumer is the payer, is so much oftener true than
the reverse of the proposition, that it is far more equitable that the
duties on imports should go into a common stock, than that they should
redound to the exclusive benefit of the importing States. But it is not
so generally true as to render it equitable, that those duties should
form the only national fund. When they are paid by the merchant they
operate as an additional tax upon the importing State, whose citizens
pay their proportion of them in the character of consumers.
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