Proprietor Quotes (6 quotes)
A tax on the farms would then result in the proprietors themselves working the lands, and this would mean better cultivation, and improvements which would yield returns indeed, but at too remote a period for the tenant. It would tend to a division of landed property, men of small fortune uniting in the purchase with capitalists who seek only the rent or payment for the land.
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 212-213.
A tax on the rent of a farm would be much better than a tax on the land itself. Proprietors then could only avoid taxes by themselves improving their property. As it is, they merely collect the rents, and usually employ their surplus in unproductive expenditure, while the proprietary farmers voluntarily devote theirs to the improvement of the land.
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 212.
Perhaps it would be necessary to weaken their opposition by not subjecting the actual proprietors to the new tax, which might take effect only with the next change either by sale or by inheritance. A restriction of the right of transfer would also facilitate the passage from one situation to the other. All changes in taxes should, as a general thing, be made gradually, in order to avoid sudden changes of fortune.
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 214.
Proprietors of lands, then, after all, have to bear the mutation taxes. All increase of these taxes is a loss for them, and these taxes are heavier on the small proprietors than on the large, because their changes are more frequent. The tax on the farms, on the contrary, would bear more heavily on large estates.
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 215.
Proprietors, becoming cultivators to escape the taxes, would settle in the country, where their presence would disseminate intelligence and comfort; their revenues, before spent unprofitably, would then pay expenses and improvements on their property.
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 213.
The establishment of such a tax would certainly find many opponents among proprietors, landed non-cultivators who form in fact the influential personnel in the state, for it is they who usually make the laws
From Appendix A, 'Extracts From the Unpublished Writings of Carnot', Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1890, 2nd ed. 1897), 213-214.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
