SIR,

THIS preface comes directed to you, not as commissioner, &c., under whom

I have the honour to serve his Majesty, nor as a friend, though I have

great obligations of that sort also, but as the most proper judge of the

subjects treated of, and more capable than the greatest part of mankind

to distinguish and understand them.

Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of

them; and to dedicate a book of projects to a person who had never

concerned himself to think that way would be like music to one that has

no ear.

And yet your having a capacity to judge of these things no way brings you

under the despicable title of a projector, any more than knowing the

practices and subtleties of wicked men makes a man guilty of their

crimes.

The several chapters of this book are the results of particular thoughts

occasioned by conversing with the public affairs during the present war

with France. The losses and casualties which attend all trading nations

in the world, when involved in so cruel a war as this, have reached us

all, and I am none of the least sufferers; if this has put me, as well as

others, on inventions and projects, so much the subject of this book, it

is no more than a proof of the reason I give for the general projecting

humour of the nation.

One unhappiness I lie under in the following book, viz.: That having kept

the greatest part of it by me for near five years, several of the

thoughts seem to be hit by other hands, and some by the public, which

turns the tables upon me, as if I had borrowed from them.

As particularly that of the seamen, which you know well I had contrived

long before the Act for registering seamen was proposed. And that of

educating women, which I think myself bound to declare, was formed long

before the book called “Advice to the Ladies” was made public; and yet I

do not write this to magnify my own invention, but to acquit myself from

grafting on other people’s thoughts. If I have trespassed upon any

person in the world, it is upon yourself, from whom I had some of the

notions about county banks, and factories for goods, in the chapter of

banks; and yet I do not think that my proposal for the women or the

seamen clashes at all, either with that book, or the public method of

registering seamen.

I have been told since this was done that my proposal for a commission of

inquiries into bankrupt estates is borrowed from the Dutch; if there is

anything like it among the Dutch, it is more than ever I knew, or know

yet; but if so, I hope it is no objection against our having the same

here, especially if it be true that it would be so publicly beneficial as

is expressed.

What is said of friendly societies, I think no man will dispute with me,

since one has met with so much success already in the practice of it. I

mean the Friendly Society for Widows, of which you have been pleased to

be a governor.

Friendly societies are very extensive, and, as I have hinted, might be

carried on to many particulars. I have omitted one which was mentioned

in discourse with yourself, where a hundred tradesmen, all of several

trades, agree together to buy whatever they want of one another, and

nowhere else, prices and payments to be settled among themselves; whereby

every man is sure to have ninety-nine customers, and can never want a

trade; and I could have filled up the book with instances of like nature,

but I never designed to fire the reader with particulars.

The proposal of the pension office you will soon see offered to the

public as an attempt for the relief of the poor; which, if it meets with

encouragement, will every way answer all the great things I have said of

it.

I had wrote a great many sheets about the coin, about bringing in plate

to the Mint, and about our standard; but so many great heads being upon

it, with some of whom my opinion does not agree, I would not adventure to

appear in print upon that subject.

Ways and means also I have laid by on the same score: only adhering to

this one point, that be it by taxing the wares they sell, be it by taxing

them in stock, be it by composition—which, by the way, I believe is the

best—be it by what way soever the Parliament please, the retailers are

the men who seem to call upon us to be taxed; if not by their own

extraordinary good circumstances, though that might bear it, yet by the

contrary in all other degrees of the kingdom.

Besides, the retailers are the only men who could pay it with least

damage, because it is in their power to levy it again upon their

customers in the prices of their goods, and is no more than paying a

higher rent for their shops.

The retailers of manufactures, especially so far as relates to the inland

trade, have never been taxed yet, and their wealth or number is not

easily calculated. Trade and land has been handled roughly enough, and

these are the men who now lie as a reserve to carry on the burden of the

war.

These are the men who, were the land tax collected as it should be, ought

to pay the king more than that whole Bill ever produced; and yet these

are the men who, I think I may venture to say, do not pay a twentieth

part in that Bill.

Should the king appoint a survey over the assessors, and indict all those

who were found faulty, allowing a reward to any discoverer of an

assessment made lower than the literal sense of the Act implies, what a

register of frauds and connivances would be found out!

In a general tax, if any should be excused, it should be the poor, who

are not able to pay, or at least are pinched in the necessary parts of

life by paying. And yet here a poor labourer, who works for twelve pence

or eighteen pence a day, does not drink a pot of beer but pays the king a

tenth part for excise; and really pays more to the king’s taxes in a year

than a country shopkeeper, who is alderman of the town, worth perhaps two

or three thousand pounds, brews his own beer, pays no excise, and in the

land-tax is rated it may be at £100, and pays £1 4s. per annum, but

ought, if the Act were put in due execution, to pay £36 per annum to the

king.

If I were to be asked how I would remedy this, I would answer, it should

be by some method in which every man may be taxed in the due proportion

to his estate, and the Act put in execution, according to the true intent

and meaning of it, in order to which a commission of assessment should be

granted to twelve men, such as his Majesty should be well satisfied of,

who should go through the whole kingdom, three in a body, and should make

a new assessment of personal estates, not to meddle with land.

To these assessors should all the old rates, parish books, poor rates,

and highway rates, also be delivered; and upon due inquiry to be made

into the manner of living, and reputed wealth of the people, the stock or

personal estate of every man should be assessed, without connivance; and

he who is reputed to be worth a thousand pounds should be taxed at a

thousand pounds, and so on; and he who was an overgrown rich tradesman of

twenty or thirty thousand pounds estate should be taxed so, and plain

English and plain dealing be practised indifferently throughout the

kingdom; tradesmen and landed men should have neighbours’ fare, as we

call it, and a rich man should not be passed by when a poor man pays.

We read of the inhabitants of Constantinople, that they suffered their

city to be lost for want of contributing in time for its defence, and

pleaded poverty to their generous emperor when he went from house to

house to persuade them; and yet when the Turks took it, the prodigious

immense wealth they found in it, made them wonder at the sordid temper of

the citizens.

England (with due exceptions to the Parliament, and the freedom wherewith

they have given to the public charge) is much like Constantinople; we are

involved in a dangerous, a chargeable, but withal a most just and

necessary war, and the richest and moneyed men in the kingdom plead

poverty; and the French, or King James, or the devil may come for them,

if they can but conceal their estates from the public notice, and get the

assessors to tax them at an under rate.

These are the men this commission would discover; and here they should

find men taxed at £500 stock who are worth £20,000. Here they should

find a certain rich man near Hackney rated to-day in the tax-book at

£1,000 stock, and to-morrow offering £27,000 for an estate.

Here they should find Sir J— C— perhaps taxed to the king at £5,000

stock, perhaps not so much, whose cash no man can guess at; and

multitudes of instances I could give by name without wrong to the

gentlemen.

And, not to run on in particulars, I affirm that in the land-tax ten

certain gentlemen in London put together did not pay for half so much

personal estate, called stock, as the poorest of them is reputed really

to possess.

I do not inquire at whose door this fraud must lie; it is none of my

business.

I wish they would search into it whose power can punish it. But this,

with submission, I presume to say: The king is thereby defrauded and

horribly abused, the true intent and meaning of Acts of Parliament

evaded, the nation involved in debt by fatal deficiencies and interests,

fellow-subjects abused, and new inventions for taxes occasioned.

The last chapter in this book is a proposal about entering all the seamen

in England into the king’s pay—a subject which deserves to be enlarged

into a book itself; and I have a little volume of calculations and

particulars by me on that head, but I thought them too long to publish.

In short, I am persuaded, was that method proposed to those gentlemen to

whom such things belong, the greatest sum of money might be raised by it,

with the least injury to those who pay it, that ever was or will be

during the war.

Projectors, they say, are generally to be taken with allowance of

one-half at least; they always have their mouths full of millions, and

talk big of their own proposals. And therefore I have not exposed the

vast sums my calculations amount to; but I venture to say I could procure

a farm on such a proposal as this at three millions per annum, and give

very good security for payment—such an opinion I have of the value of

such a method; and when that is done, the nation would get three more by

paying it, which is very strange, but might easily be made out.

In the chapter of academies I have ventured to reprove the vicious custom

of swearing. I shall make no apology for the fact, for no man ought to

be ashamed of exposing what all men ought to be ashamed of practising.

But methinks I stand corrected by my own laws a little, in forcing the

reader to repeat some of the worst of our vulgar imprecations, in reading

my thoughts against it; to which, however, I have this to reply:

First, I did not find it easy to express what I mean without putting down

the very words—at least, not so as to be very intelligible.

Secondly, why should words repeated only to expose the vice, taint the

reader more than a sermon preached against lewdness should the

assembly?—for of necessity it leads the hearer to the thoughts of the

fact. But the morality of every action lies in the end; and if the

reader by ill-use renders himself guilty of the fact in reading, which I

designed to expose by writing, the fault is his, not mine.

I have endeavoured everywhere in this book to be as concise as possible,

except where calculations obliged me to be particular; and having avoided

impertinence in the book, I would avoid it too, in the preface, and

therefore shall break off with subscribing myself,

Sir,