$5, therefore, would be paid by the occupier. But a tax on ground-rent is supposed to be a portion of a house-tax which is not a fixed payment, but a percentage on the rent. The cheapest site, therefore, being supposed as before to pay $5, the dearest would pay $500, of which only the $5 could be thrown upon the occupier, since the rent would still be only raised to $5,005. Consequently, $495 of the $500 levied from the expensive site would fall on the ground-landlord.341 A house-tax thus requires to be considered in a double aspect, as a tax on all occupiers of houses, and a tax on ground-rents.
In the vast majority of houses the ground-rent forms but a small proportion of the annual payment made for the house, and nearly all the tax falls on the occupier. It is only in exceptional cases, like that of the favorite situations in large towns, that the predominant element in the rent of the house is the ground-rent; and, among the very few kinds of income which are fit subjects for peculiar taxation, these ground-rents hold the principal place, being the most gigantic example extant of enormous accessions of riches acquired rapidly, and in many cases unexpectedly, by a few families, from the mere accident of their possessing certain tracts of land without their having themselves aided in the acquisition by the smallest exertion, outlay, or risk. So far, therefore, as a house-tax falls on the ground-landlord, it is liable to no valid objection.
In so far as it falls on the occupier, if justly proportioned to the value of the house, it is one of the fairest and most unobjectionable of all taxes. No part of a person's expenditure is a better criterion of his means, or bears, on the whole, more nearly the same proportion to them. The equality of this tax can only be seriously questioned on two grounds. The first is,