Volume I Part 16 (2/2)

Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital points of view. Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has thought proper to affirm that ”they are comparatively light”; that ”she has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours”; his effrontery on this head is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax in England to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burden, does not exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the n.o.blesse are still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of a hundred years, and which were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than our modern land-tax? Besides that all the gentry of France serve in the army on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not n.o.ble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of _salt?_ that they compel the people to take a certain quant.i.ty of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quant.i.ty fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?[66] that they pay in France the _Taille_, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the acquisitions of their _industry_? and that in France a heavy _capitation-tax_ is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort of people? Have we taxes of such weight, or anything at all of the compulsion, in the article of _salt_? do we pay any _taillage_, any _faculty-tax_, any _industry-tax?_ do we pay any _capitation-tax_ whatsoever? I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not a single article of provision for man or beast which enters that great city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher's-meat, fish, fowls, everything. I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on the consumption of great luxurious cities. I only state the fact. We should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50_s._ upon every ox sold in Smithfield. Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2_d._ a bottle.

We, indeed, tax our beer; but the imposition on small beer is very far from heavy. In no part of England are eatables of any kind the object of taxation. In almost every other country in Europe they are excised, more or less. I have by me the state of the revenues of many of the princ.i.p.al nations on the Continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am fairly warranted to a.s.sert, that England is the most lightly taxed of any of the great states of Europe. They, whose unnatural and sullen joy arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their country, will revolt at this position. But if I am called upon, I will prove it beyond all possibility of dispute; even though this proof should deprive these gentlemen of the singular satisfaction of considering their country as undone; and though the best civil government, the best const.i.tuted, and the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamors and complaints. As to our neighbor and rival France, in addition to what I have here suggested, I say, and when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than England, on a computation of the wealth of both countries; that her taxes are more injudiciously and more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected; come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers, and are less applied by far to the public service. I am not one of those who choose to take the author's word for this happy and flouris.h.i.+ng condition of the French finances, rather than attend to the changes, the violent pushes and the despair of all her own financiers. Does he choose to be referred for the easy and happy condition of the subject in France to the remonstrances of their own parliaments, written with such an eloquence, feeling, and energy, as I have not seen exceeded in any other writings? The author may say, their complaints are exaggerated, and the effects of faction. I answer, that they are the representations of numerous, grave, and most respectable bodies of men, upon the affairs of their own country. But, allowing that discontent and faction may pervert the judgment of such venerable bodies in France, we have as good a right to suppose that the same causes may full as probably have produced from a private, however respectable person, that frightful, and, I trust I have shown, groundless representation of our own affairs in England.

The author is so conscious of the dangerous effects of that representation, that he thinks it necessary, and very necessary it is, to guard against them. He a.s.sures us, ”that he has not made that display of the difficulties of his country, to expose her counsels to the ridicule of other states, or to provoke a vanquished enemy to insult her; nor to excite the people's rage against their governors, or sink them into a despondency of the public welfare.” I readily admit this apology for his intentions. G.o.d forbid I should think any man capable of entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not s.h.i.+ne upon disappointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable state of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen.

They find an advantage too; for it is a general, popular error, to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of relief and profit to themselves, they are apt to be careless enough about either the means or the consequences.

Whatever this complainant's motives may be, the effects can by no possibility be other than those which he so strongly, and I hope truly, disclaims all intention of producing. To verify this, the reader has only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn in his 32nd page, of the state of this kingdom; such a picture as, I believe, has hardly been applicable, without some exaggeration, to the most degenerate and undone commonwealth that ever existed. Let this view of things be compared with the prospect of a remedy which he proposes in the page directly opposite, and the subsequent. I believe no man living could have imagined it possible, except for the sake of burlesquing a subject, to propose remedies so ridiculously disproportionate to the evil, so full of uncertainty in their operation, and depending for their success in every step upon the happy event of so many new, dangerous, and visionary projects. It is not amiss, that he has thought proper to give the public some little notice of what they may expect from his friends, when our affairs shall be committed to their management. Let us see how the accounts of disease and remedy are balanced in his ”State of the Nation.” In the first place, on the side of evils, he states, ”an impoverished and heavily-burdened public. A declining trade and decreasing specie. The power of the crown never so much extended over the great; but the great without influence over the lower sort.

Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the mult.i.tude set up against the sense of the legislature; a people luxurious and licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all authority. Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt selfish spirit pervading the whole. An opinion of many, that the form of government is not worth contending for. No attachment in the bulk of the people towards the const.i.tution. No reverence for the customs of our ancestors. No attachment but to private interest, nor any zeal but for selfish gratifications. Trade and manufactures going to ruin. Great Britain in danger of becoming tributary to France, and the descent of the crown dependent on her pleasure. Ireland, in case of a war, to become a prey to France; and Great Britain, unable to recover Ireland, cede it by treaty,” (the author never can think of a treaty without making cessions,) ”in order to purchase peace for herself. The colonies left exposed to the ravages of a domestic, or the conquest of a foreign enemy.”--Gloomy enough, G.o.d knows. The author well observes,[67] _that a mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect without horror; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to hear its description_. He ought to have added, that no man of common discretion ought to have exhibited it to the public, if it were true; or of common honesty, if it were false.

But now for the comfort; the day-star which is to arise in our hearts; the author's grand scheme for totally reversing this dismal state of things, and making us[68] ”happy at home and respected abroad, formidable in war and flouris.h.i.+ng in peace.”

In this great work he proceeds with a facility equally astonis.h.i.+ng and pleasing. Never was financier less embarra.s.sed by the burden of establishments, or with the difficulty of finding ways and means. If an establishment is troublesome to him, he lops off at a stroke just as much of it as he chooses. He mows down, without giving quarter, or a.s.signing reason, army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries; nothing can stand before him. Then, when he comes to provide, Amalthea's horn is in his hands; and he pours out with an inexhaustible bounty, taxes, duties, loans, and revenues, without uneasiness to himself, or burden to the public. Insomuch that, when we consider the abundance of his resources, we cannot avoid being surprised at his extraordinary attention to savings. But it is all the exuberance of his goodness.

This book has so much of a certain tone of power, that one would be almost tempted to think it written by some person who had been high in office. A man is generally rendered somewhat a worse reasoner for having been a minister. In private, the a.s.sent of listening and obsequious friends; in public, the venal cry and prepared vote of a pa.s.sive senate, confirm him in habits of begging the question with impunity, and a.s.serting without thinking himself obliged to prove. Had it not been for some such habits, the author could never have expected that we should take his estimate for a peace establishment solely on his word.

This estimate which he gives,[69] is the great groundwork of his plan for the national redemption; and it ought to be well and firmly laid, or what must become of the superstructure? One would have thought the natural method in a plan of reformation would be, to take the present existing estimates as they stand; and then to show what may be practicably and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say, be the natural course; and what would be expected from a man of business. But this author takes a very different method. For the ground of his speculation of a present peace establishment, he resorts to a former speculation of the same kind, which was in the mind of the minister of the year 1764. Indeed it never existed anywhere else. ”The plan,”[70]

says he, with his usual ease, ”has been already formed, and the outline drawn, by the administration of 1764. I shall attempt to fill up the void and obliterated parts, and trace its operation. The standing expense of the present (his projected) peace establishment, _improved by the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated_”; and he estimates it at 3,468,161_l._

Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons for condemning the subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favor of his new project; which has in some articles exceeded, in others fallen short, but on the whole is much below his old one. Hardly a word on any of these points, the only points however that are in the least essential; for unless you a.s.sign reasons for the increase or diminution of the several articles of public charge, the playing at establishments and estimates is an amus.e.m.e.nt of no higher order, and of much less ingenuity, than _Questions and commands_, or _What is my thought like_?

To bring more distinctly under the reader's view this author's strange method of proceeding, I will lay before him the three schemes; viz. the idea of the ministers in 1764, the actual estimates of the two last years as given by the author himself, and lastly the new project of his political millennium:--

Plan of establishment for 1764, as by ”Considerations,” p. 43 [71] 3,609,700 Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by ”State of the Nation,” p. 29 and 30 3,919,375 Present peace establishment, as by the project in ”State of the Nation,” p. 33 3,468,161

It is not from anything our author has anywhere said, that you are enabled to find the ground, much less the justification, of the immense difference between these several systems; you must compare them yourself, article by article; no very pleasing employment, by the way, to compare the agreement or disagreement of two chimeras. I now only speak of the comparison of his own two projects. As to the latter of them, it differs from the former, by having some of the articles diminished, and others increased.[72] I find the chief article of reduction arises from the smaller deficiency of land and malt, and of the annuity funds, which he brings down to 295,561_l._ in his new estimate, from 502,400_l._ which he had allowed for those articles in the ”Considerations.” With this _reduction_, owing, as it must be, merely to a smaller deficiency of funds, he has nothing at all to do. It can be no work and no merit of his. But with regard to the _increase_, the matter is very different. It is all his own; the public is loaded (for anything we can see to the contrary) entirely _gratis_. The chief articles of the increase are on the navy,[73] and on the army and ordnance extraordinaries; the navy being estimated in his ”State of the Nation” 50,000_l._ a year more, and the army and ordnance extraordinaries 40,000_l._ more, than he had thought proper to allow for them in that estimate in his ”Considerations,” which he makes the foundation of his present project. He has given no sort of reason, stated no sort of necessity, for this additional allowance, either in the one article or the other. What is still stronger, he admits that his allowance for the army and ordnance extras is too great, and expressly refers you to the ”Considerations”;[74] where, far from giving 75,000_l._ a year to that service, as the ”State of the Nation” has done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision of 35,000_l._ to be by far too considerable, and thinks it may well admit of further reductions.[75] Thus, according to his own principles, this great economist falls into a vicious prodigality; and is as far in his estimate from a consistency with his own principles as with the real nature of the services.

Still, however, his present establishment differs from its archetype of 1764, by being, though raised in particular parts, upon the whole, about 141,000_l._ smaller. It is improved, he tells us, by the experience of the two last years. One would have concluded that the peace establishment of these two years had been less than that of 1764, in order to suggest to the author his improvements, which enabled him to reduce it. But how does that turn out?

Peace establishment[76] 1767 and 1768, medium 3,919,375 Ditto, estimate in the ”Considerations,” for 1764 3,609,700 --------- Difference 309,675

A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience then of the two last years ought naturally to have given the idea of a heavier establishment; but this writer is able to diminish by increasing, and to draw the effects of subtraction from the operations of addition. By means of these new powers, he may certainly do whatever he pleases. He is indeed moderate enough in the use of them, and condescends to settle his establishments at 3,468,161_l._ a year.

However, he has not yet done with it; he has further ideas of saving, and new resources of revenue. These additional savings are princ.i.p.ally two: 1st, _It is to be hoped_,[77] says he, that the sum of 250,000_l._ (which in the estimate he allows for the deficiency of land and malt) will be less by 37,924_l._[78]

2nd, That the sum of 20,000_l._ allowed for the Foundling Hospital, and 1800_l._ for American Surveys, will soon cease to be necessary, as the services will be completed.

What follows, with regard to the resources,[79] is very well worthy the reader's attention. ”Of this estimate,” says he, ”upwards of 300,000_l._ will be for the plantation service; and that sum, _I hope_, the people of Ireland and the colonies _might be induced_ to take off Great Britain, and defray between them, in the proportion of 200,000_l._ by the colonies, and 100,000_l._ by Ireland.”

Such is the whole of this mighty scheme. Take his reduced estimate, and his further reductions, and his resources all together, and the result will be,--he will _certainly_ lower the provision made for the navy. He will cut off largely (G.o.d knows what or how) from the army and ordnance extraordinaries. He may be _expected_ to cut off more. He _hopes_ that the deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual; and he _hopes_ that America and Ireland might be _induced_ to take off 300,000_l._ of our annual charges.

If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations, and Inducements, should fail him, there will be a formidable gaping breach in his whole project. If all of them should fail, he has left the nation without a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrors which he has thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended with success, would signify anything to our revenue, can have no effect but to add to our distractions and dangers, we shall be if possible in a still worse condition from his projects of cure, than he represents us from our original disorders.

Before we examine into the consequences of these schemes, and the probability of these savings, let us suppose them all real and all safe, and then see what it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them:--

Deficiency on land and malt, less by 37,000 Foundling Hospital 20,000 American Surveys 1,800 ------- 58,800

This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies: and yet he chooses to a.s.sert,[81] ”that we may venture on the credit of them to reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161_l._) to 3,300,000_l._”; that is, for a saving of 58,000_l._ he is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than 168,161_l._! Suppose even that we were to take up the estimate of the ”Considerations” (which is however abandoned in the ”State of the Nation”), and reduce his 75,000_l._ extraordinaries to the original 35,000_l._, still all these savings joined together give us but 98,800_l._; that is, near 70,000_l._ short of the credit he calls for, and for which he has neither given any reason, nor furnished any data whatsoever for others to reason upon.

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