288 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

check in supply which the taxation tends to produce must
become actual. If the operation of other influences offset
the restraining effects of the taxation of the revenues arising
from capital and labour, the throwing off of the burden of
taxation will be prevented. The mode of expenditure of
tax-revenue may, for example, do more to strengthen the
competitive position of some classes than of others, and the
ultimate distribution of burdens be modified by this feature.
It is to be observed that no small part of government
expenditure tends, in modern times, to the advantage of
the wage-earning classes. Thus the provision of facilities
for education, such as schools, museums, libraries, technical
institutes, and the like, is calculated to strengthen the position
of wage-earners. Perhaps this strength may be derived even
more from a real increase of productive efficiency than from
a larger power to secure an advantage in distribution, The
effect is of the kind already considered, where the outlay of
the revenues administered by the government does as much,
to add to the advantages of a taxed class, as the exaction of
the taxes does to reduce those advantages. If, further, the
expenditure of public revenues be made in such a fashion as
to occupy part of the field otherwise open for the employment
 of private capital, the effect found to follow the check
on accumulation, which is imposed by a tax on interest, may
be reduced or nullified. If the demand for capital be
decreased, the check to supply will not raise the marginal
productivity by so much as if no such limitation were
imposed on the demand, if it raise it at all.
What precedes will have indicated sufficiently that the
final incidence of any tax cannot easily be deduced from a
knowledge of the original impact. If, in addition, we take
into account the fact that individual taxes are quite generally
contrived so as to fall on more than one kind of revenue,
while individual tax-payers quite commonly enjoy revenues
made up of portions from more than one of the chief classes
considered, the difficulties attending the determination of
the distribution of the burden of any actual system of
taxation, among those who pay the taxes, will be obvious.
Yet, in order to attain justice, it is necessary to have some