ART. VI. Considerations addressed to the People of Great Britain on the Expediency of continuing the Property-Tax a certain Number of Years. Svo. 75 PP. Rivingtons. 1815, So universal has been the desire of every rank and description of the community to relieve themselves from a tax of so keen and searching a nature, as that which is at present imposed upon their property, that the voice of the whole nation, without respect either to party interest or political principle, may fairly be said to have been raised against its continuance. So contagious has been the clamour, that we also had well nigh been infected by the spirit of vociferation, and were almost prepared to anathematize the odious impost, when the pamphlet before us met our eye. This publication, we must confess, has thrown somewhat of a damp upon the ardour of our patriotism, by the suggestion of an enquiry sufficiently obvious to any, but those who can hear no voice, and listen to no representations, but those of immediate gratification and momentary interest,-an enquiry whether any other tax can be found less oppressive in its burthens, less severe in its exaction, and less partial in its application. Bold indeed must that man be who shall step forward with his single voice to oppose the sense (as it is by a certain perversion of terms denominated) of the whole English people; and shall vindicate the cause of that enemy, which by the vote of parliament, is now no more. However unpopular the tendency of his arguments may be, they deserve serious attention; and we have too much reason to fear, that they will be found too reasonable to be cried down, and too just to be controverted. Such a publication at this important period in our financial affairs must recommend itself to general notice. Under the various pressures of the late war, the people of Great Britain submitted, with unprecedented patience, to the burdens that were laid on them; and cheerfully paid their taxes, because such of them as were capable of reflection, were convinced that we were struggling for our very existence as a nation, and that we must either part with much of our property to support the measures of our own government, or soon be deprived of the whole by a foreign tyrant. Many persons, however, flattered themselves with the hope that their burdens would be entirely removed, and all the war-taxes, as they were called, taken off, on the return of peace! None indeed, but the least informed part of the community, could have cherished such hopes as these but the least informed is the most numerous and the most noisy part of every community; and the leaders of faction taking advantage vantage of this circumstance, have incited various counties, corporations, and individuals not generally disaffected to the government, to harrass the ministry with petitions for a diminution of the war-taxes in general, and a discontinuance of the property tax entirely. It is not probable that the first movers of these petitions think it possible that the object cau be granted; but they may hope, by means of popular clamour, to drive the present ministry from the helm of government, and to get possession of it themselves. This is all which the opposition orators and their partizans have in view; but the specimen which we have already had of the alternative to which the nation would be reduced, is too fresh in the memory of every man to give them the smallest chance of obtaining this prize, were it not for another circumstance, which, at an early period of the late war, resulted from the want of foresight in different classes of the community. On the destruction of the French and Spanish marine, our commerce and manufactures increased with astonishing ra pidity. We became indeed the carriers of the world; we found a market for our own commodities in every country; and having no rivals, we disposed of those commodities on our own terms. Our manufacturers, especially of cotton, vainly supposed that this accidental privilege of clothing the whole world, would be continued to them for ever; and instead of making hay while the sun shone, they dissipated their immense gains in riotous and luxurious living. This produced an enlarged demand for all the products of the soil, which were wasted in extravagance; and the farmers were encouraged by a ready market and high prices for their corn and cattle, to offer such rents for land, as a moment's reflection might have convinced them that they would not be able to pay, should the people ever return to their wonted course of economy, sobriety, and temperance. Cool reflection, however, seems to have been as far from the minds of farmers as from those of manufacturers, and the rents of land were, all at once, doubled, tripled, and in some places quadrupled! As long as we engrossed the trade of the world, this forced state of things occasioned little inconveniency Mankind must have food and cloathing; those nations which could not cloath themselves, were under the necessity of purchasing, at any price, the materials of their cloathis from the only nation which could supply them; the commercial part of the British nation, exulting in their success, chose to live luxuriously; the agriculturist very wisely made them pay a great price, not only for those luxuries, but also for the necessaries of life; the farmers were therefore enabled to pay their high rents as well as their share of the public burdens; and all ranks in the kingdom, except the money anuuitants, annuitants, had it thus in their power to retain their relative sta tions, with respect to each other. The value of the circulating medium was indeed sunk; but men in the different orders of society become very little richer or poorer than they were before the commencement of the French revolution. Buonaparte's continental system, however, was introduced for the express purpose of ruining British commerce, and of course British wealth and British power; and could it have been carried completely into effect, it would, unquestionably, have rendered it impossible for this nation to have continued much longer her efforts for the liberation of Europe. Even the check which it actually gave to our commerce, alarmed all orders of men among us. Bankruptcies, to a great extent, occasionally occurred among our manufacturers; many of them were thrown out of employment, and reduced from affluence to extreme penury; the demands made by them for the various productions of the soil become less extravagant; and the farmers began to feel that they should not long be able to pay for their lands the rents which they had promised, unless the commerce of the country were restored to its utmost freedom, and the manufac turers enabled to display their wonted extravagance. The tyrant and his system have been overturned; but he must be very short sighted, who expects our commerce to reach, during a period of profound peace, the extent to which it arrived during the late war, before that system was thought of. Those nations which were not permitted to purchase our manufactures during the latter part of the tyrant's reign, were under the necessity of carrying on the same kind of manufactures for themselves; and though their goods may not, for some years, rival our's in excellence, the inferior money-price at which they can be purchased, will reconcile the people of the continent to the use of them; and practice will improve the skill of foreign manufac turers, as it has improved that of the British. All this every man must have foreseen as the necessary consequences of a general peace; but all orders seem to imagine that if the war-taxes were taken off, these consequences might be averted. The farmer vainly hopes that he may be able to pay his rent, and at the same time live in that state of luxury into which he had been, in a manner, forced by the nature of the late war, were the importation of foreign corn to be prohibited; and the manufacturer hopes, with as little reason, that he would still be able to engross the foreign market, were the war-taxes in the customs and excise, and above all, the property-tax to be discontinued. With the importation of foreign corn we have at present nothing to do; though it is obvious that were it to be absolutely prohibited, the consequence would be such to Our our commerce with foreign parts, as no diminution of taxes could compensate; and that such a prohibition, though favour able perhaps, for a year or two, to the farmer, would soon ing volve him and all other orders of men in one common ruin. It is the object of this pamphlet to prove, that the whole of the war-taxes cannot be discontinued without soon involving the nation in bankruptcy; and that of those taxes, that which is called the property tax, can be continued for some years with the least inconvenience to the people at large, and with the greatest advantage to the exchequer. Having proved that the interest of the public debt, including the annual parliamentary grant of 1,200,000, is very little short of forty-three millions a year, and that this immense sum as well as the necessary expenditure of government must be provided for, the author intro duces the people, to whom the tract is addressed, as exclaiming; "Are we not then to get rid of the war-tases at the end of the war? and is that most oppressive of all burdens, the property-tax to be continued, by a renewed act of parliament ?" To this he replies, "Before any attempt can be made to answer these questions, have the goodness to attend to the following facts. £.63,461,864 "The amount of the revenue, arising from taxes of all descrip tionss for the year ending 10th October, 1814, was Of which the proportion of war-taxes was And the permanent taxes, of course, were Now it was stated above, that the expence of the pub- Leaving a deficiency of 23,475,405 £. 39,986,459 £. 42,850,000 39,986,459 £. 2,863,541 "From this statement it appears, that if we deduct the war. taxes from the gross revenue of 181,-the largest that ever was received into the Exchequer of Great Britain,-the remainder will not defray the expence of the National Debt, and at the same time keep up the Sinking Fund." P. 8. Whilst nothing will remain to defray the expences of a peaceestablishment. The author then inquires what would be the consequence, was the Property tax to be immediately taken off, and that portion of the war-taxes, which is raised in the customs and excise to be continued. After observing that it will be absolutely necessary to grant every facility to the British merchant to enable him to maintain his ground in any degree against so many rivals as he must now have in the commercial world, he proceeds thus "Let "Let us suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the war-taxes in the Customs and Excise are both to be continued, and we shall have, in addition to the permanent taxes, which are £. 39,986,459 "Thus we have only £. 6,422,727 for all the purposes of a peace establishment, even upon the supposition that the war-taxes in the Customs and Excise shall be continued. But they cannot be continued without hampering trade, and throwing obstacles in the way of commercial enterprise; on which account, the revenue, to meet our peace establishment, will not exceed three millions." P. 9. What then is to be done? It is manifest to every one that the affairs of this country could not go on in such circumstances? "There are," continues the author, "but three plans which naturally present themselves on this occasion, and which we shall consider in their order. The first is, to discontinue the Sinking Fund, and to apply its produce to meet the demands of the peace establishment: the second is, to impose new taxes, or to increase those already in existence, so as to raise fourteen or fifteen millions per annum and the third and simplest is, to renew the Property Tax Bill a certain number of years.' P. 11. The author traces the effects which must be produced by each of these plans, and with respect to the first, he proves completely, that the abandonment of the sinking fund would be productive of ruin and degradation the most certain and inevitable to this mighty empire. It would likewise be fraught with ruin as certain to all those individuals who have their money in the funds; for what would be the value of stock which was certainly never to be paid, and on which the dividends could be paid no longer than till the breaking out of the first formidable war? This question deserves the most deliberate consideration of those, who, as our author observes, "love to declaim at popular meetings on the subject of finances, and to dictate resolutions for the instruction of parliament." He then proceeds to the second head of his inquiry, and proves that, in the present state of the world, a British financier has no field for his operations but in the assessed taxes alone,-shewing at the same time, that the complete failure of Mr. Pitt's plan for raising, on the assessed taxes, the whole supplies within the year is sufficient evidence that nothing effectual can be done on that |