already made two reports. Every conclusion that I had before drawn, as
you know, from my own observation, I have the satisfaction of seeing
there confirmed by that great public authority. Large as was the sum by
which the committee of 1791 found the estimate of 1786 to have been
exceeded in the actual produce of four years of peace, their own
estimate has been exceeded during the war by a sum more than one third
larger. The same taxes have yielded more than half a million beyond
their calculation. They yielded this, notwithstanding the stoppage of
the distilleries, against which, you may remember, I privately
remonstrated. With an allowance for that defalcation, they have yielded
sixty thousand pounds annually above the actual average of the preceding
four years of peace. I believe this to have been without parallel in all
former wars. If regard be had to the great and unavoidable burdens of
the present war, I am confident of the fact.
But let us descend to particulars. The taxes which go by the general
name of Assessed Taxes comprehend the whole, or nearly the whole,
domestic establishment of the rich. They include some things which
belong to the middling, and even to all but the very lowest classes.
They now consist of the duties on houses and windows, on male servants,
horses, and carriages. They did also extend to cottages, to female
servants, wagons, and carts used in husbandry, previous to the year
1792,--when, with more enlightened policy, at the moment that the
possibility of war could not be out of the contemplation of any
statesman, the wisdom of Parliament confined them to their present
objects. I shall give the gross assessment for five years, as I find it
in the Appendix to the Second Report of your committee.
1791 ending 5th April 1792 £1,706,334
1792 1793 1,585,991
1793 1794 1,597,623
1794 1795 1,608,196
1795 1796 1,625,874
Here will be seen a gradual increase during the whole progress of the
war; and if I am correctly informed, the rise in the last year, after
every deduction that can be made, affords the most consoling and
encouraging prospect. It is enormously out of all proportion.
There are some other taxes which seem to have a reference to the same
general head. The present minister many years ago subjected bricks and
tiles to a duty under the excise. It is of little consequence to our
present consideration, whether these materials have been employed in
building more commodious, more elegant, and more magnificent
habitations, or in enlarging, decorating, and remodelling those which
sufficed for our plainer ancestors. During the first two years of the
war, they paid so largely to the public revenue, that in 1794 a new duty
was laid upon them, which was equal to one half of the old, and which
has produced upwards of 165,000_l._ in the last three years. Yet,
notwithstanding the pressure of this additional weight,[40] there has
been an actual augmentation in the consumption. The only two other
articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold
and silver plate, and the customs on glass plates. This latter is now, I
believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the
catalogue of our imports. If it were wholly to vanish, I should not
think we were ruined. Both the duties have risen, during the war, very
considerably in proportion to the total of their produce.
We have no tax among us on the most necessary articles of food. The
receipts of our Custom-House, under the head of Groceries, afford us,
however, some means of calculating our luxuries of the table. The
articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to
take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at
home. Upon this principle, adding them all together, (with the exception
of sugar, for a reason which I shall afterwards mention,) I find that
they have produced, in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000_l._,
and in the other mode upwards of 165,000_l._, more during the war than
in peace.[41] An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another
on coffee, and a third on raisins,--an article, together with currants,
of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined. The balance
in favor of our argument would have been much enhanced, if our coffee
and fruit ships from the Mediterranean had arrived, last year, at their
usual season. They do not appear in these accounts. This was one
consequence arising (would to God that none more afflicting to Italy, to
Europe, and the whole civilized world had arisen!) from our impolitic
and precipitate desertion of that important maritime station. As to
sugar,[42] I have excluded it from the groceries, because the account of
the customs is not a perfect criterion of the consumption, much having
been reëxported to the North of Europe, which used to be supplied by
France; and in the official papers which I have followed there are no
materials to furnish grounds for computing this reëxportation. The
increase on the face of our entries is immense during the four years of
war,--little short of thirteen hundred thousand pounds.
The increase of the duties on beer has been regularly progressive, or
nearly so, to a very large amount.[43] It is a good deal above a
million, and is more than equal to one eighth of the whole produce.
Under this general head some other liquors are included,--cider, perry,
and mead, as well as vinegar and verjuice; but these are of very
trifling consideration. The excise duties on wine, having sunk a little
during the first two years of the war, were rapidly recovering their
level again. In 1795 a heavy additional duty was imposed upon them, and
a second in the following year; yet, being compared with four years of
peace to 1790, they actually exhibit a small gain to the revenue. And
low as the importation may seem in 1796, when contrasted with any year
since the French treaty in 1787, it is still more than 3000 tuns above
the average importation for three years previous to that period. I have
added sweets, from which our factitious wines are made; and I would have
added spirits, but that the total alteration of the duties in 1789, and
the recent interruption of our distilleries, rendered any comparison
impracticable.
The ancient staple of our island, in which we are clothed, is very
imperfectly to be traced on the books of the Custom-House: but I know
that our woollen manufactures flourish. I recollect to have seen that
fact very fully established, last year, from the registers kept in the
West Riding of Yorkshire. This year, in the West of England, I received
a similar account, on the authority of a respectable clothier in that
quarter, whose testimony can less be questioned, because, in his
political opinions, he is adverse, as I understand, to the continuance
of the war. The principal articles of female dress for some time past
have been muslins and calicoes.[44] These elegant fabrics of our own
looms in the East, which serve for the remittance of our own revenues,
have lately been imitated at home, with improving success, by the
ingenious and enterprising manufacturers of Manchester, Paisley, and
Glasgow. At the same time the importation from Bengal has kept pace with
the extension of our own dexterity and industry; while the sale of our
printed goods,[45] of both kinds, has been with equal steadiness
advanced by the taste and execution of our designers and artists. Our
woollens and cottons, it is true, are not all for the home market. They
do not distinctly prove, what is my present point, our own wealth by our
own expense. I admit it: we export them in great and growing quantities:
and they who croak themselves hoarse about the decay of our trade may
put as much of this account as they choose to the creditor side of money
received from other countries in payment for British skill and labor.
They may settle the items to their own liking, where all goes to
demonstrate our riches. I shall be contented here with whatever they
will have the goodness to leave me, and pass to another entry, which is
less ambiguous,--I mean that of silk.[46] The manufactory itself is a
forced plant. We have been obliged to guard it from foreign competition
by very strict prohibitory laws. What we import is the raw and prepared
material, which is worked up in various ways, and worn in various shapes
by both sexes. After what we have just seen, you will probably be
surprised to learn that the quantity of silk imported during the war has
been much greater than it was previously in peace; and yet we must all
remember, to our mortification, that several of our silk ships fell a
prey to Citizen Admiral Richery. You will hardly expect me to go through
the tape and thread, and all the other small wares of haberdashery and
millinery to be gleaned up among our imports. But I shall make one
observation, and with great satisfaction, respecting them. They
gradually diminish, as our own manufactures of the same description
spread into their places; while the account of ornamental articles which
our country does not produce, and we cannot wish it to produce,
continues, upon the whole, to rise, in spite of all the caprices of
fancy and fashion. Of this kind are the different furs[47] used for
muffs, trimmings, and linings, which, as the chief of the kind, I shall
particularize. You will find them below.
The diversions of the higher classes form another and the only
remaining head of inquiry into their expenses: I mean those diversions
which distinguish the country and the town life,--which are visible and
tangible to the statesman,--which have some public measure and standard.
And here, when, I look to the report of your committee, I, for the first
time, perceive a failure. It is clearly so. Whichever way I reckon the
four years of peace, the old tax on the sports of the field has
certainly proved deficient since the war. The same money, however, or
nearly the same, has been paid to government,--though the same number of
individuals have not contributed to the payment. An additional tax was
laid in 1791, and during the war has produced upwards of 61,000_l._,
which is about 4000_l._ more than the decrease of the old tax, in one
scheme of comparison, and about 4000_l._ less, in the other scheme. I
might remark, that the amount of the new tax, in the several years of
the war, by no means bears the proportion which it ought to the old.
There seems to be some great irregularity or other in the receipt. But I
do not think it worth while to examine into the argument. I am willing
to suppose that many, who, in the idleness of peace, made war upon
partridges, hares, and pheasants, may now carry more noble arms against
the enemies of their country. Our political adversaries may do what they
please with that concession. They are welcome to make the most of it. I
am sure of a very handsome set-off in the other branch of expense,--the
amusements of a town life.
There is much gayety and dissipation and profusion which must escape and
disappoint all the arithmetic of political economy. But the theatres are
a prominent feature. They are established through every part of the
kingdom, at a cost unknown till our days. There is hardly a provincial
capital which does not possess, or which does not aspire to possess, a
theatre-royal. Most of them engage for a short time, at a vast price,
every actor or actress of name in the metropolis: a distinction which in
the reign of my old friend Garrick was confined to very few. The
dresses, the scenes, the decorations of every kind, I am told, are in a
new style of splendor and magnificence: whether to the advantage of our
dramatic taste, upon the whole, I very much doubt. It is a show and a
spectacle, not a play, that is exhibited. This is undoubtedly in the
genuine manner of the Augustan age, but in a manner which was censured
by one of the best poets and critics of that or any age:--
Migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana:
Quatuor aut plures aulæa premuntur in horas,
Dum fugiunt equitum turmæ, peditumque catervæ;--
I must interrupt the passage, most fervently to deprecate and abominate
the sequel:--
Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis.
I hope that no French fraternization, which the relations of peace and
amity with systematized regicide would assuredly sooner or later draw
after them, even if it should overturn our happy Constitution itself,
could so change the hearts of Englishmen as to make them delight in
representations and processions which have no other merit than that of
degrading and insulting the name of royalty. But good taste, manners,
morals, religion, all fly, wherever the principles of Jacobinism enter;
and we have no safety against them but in arms.
The proprietors, whether in this they follow or lead what is called the
town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must
collect so much more from the public. It was but just before the
breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very
tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented to Lord
North as certain ruin to their affairs to demand for the state. The
example has since been imitated by the managers of our Italian Opera.
Once during the war, if not twice, (I would not willingly misstate
anything, but I am not very accurate on these subjects,) they have
raised the price of their subscription. Yet I have never heard that any
lasting dissatisfaction has been manifested, or that their houses have
been unusually and constantly thin. On the contrary, all the three
theatres have been repeatedly altered, and refitted, and enlarged, to
make them capacious of the crowds that nightly flock to them; and one of
those huge and lofty piles, which lifts its broad shoulders in gigantic
pride, almost emulous of the temples of God, has been reared from the
foundation at a charge of more than fourscore thousand pounds, and yet
remains a naked, rough, unsightly heap.
I am afraid, my dear Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though
important details. But we are upon a subject which, like some of a
higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying
instruction. I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted
minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress
and predicting the immediate ruin of their country. These birds of evil
presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song;
and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that
they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the
periods of our most abundant prosperity. Very early in my public life I
had occasion to make myself a little acquainted with their natural
history. My first political tract in the collection which a friend has
made of my publications is an answer to a very gloomy picture of the
state of the nation, which was thought to have been drawn by a statesman
of some eminence in his time. That was no more than the common spleen of
disappointed ambition: in the present day I fear that too many are
actuated by a more malignant and dangerous spirit. They hope, by
depressing our minds with a despair of our means and resources, to drive
us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom,
from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in
strict concert and coöperation. If, with the report of your Finance
Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can
still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended
fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of
counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we
forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold assertors, dexterous
sophisters. Proof must be accumulated upon proof, to silence them. With
this view, I shall now direct your attention to some other striking and
unerring indications of our flourishing condition; and they will, in
general, be derived from other sources, but equally authentic: from
other reports and proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, all which
unite with wonderful force of consent in the same general result.
Hitherto we have seen the superfluity of our capital discovering itself
only in procuring superfluous accommodation and enjoyment, in our
houses, in our furniture, in our establishments, in our eating and
drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions: we shall now see it
more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself: we shall
see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury
for posterity.
To what ultimate extent it may be wise or practicable to push inclosures
of common and waste lands may be a question of doubt, in some points of
view: but no person thinks them already carried to excess; and the
relative magnitude of the sums laid out upon them gives us a standard of
estimating the comparative situation of the landed interest. Your House,
this session, appointed a committee on waste lands, and they have made a
report by their chairman, an honorable baronet, for whom the minister
the other day (with very good intentions, I believe, but with little
real profit to the public) thought fit to erect a board of agriculture.
The account, as it stands there, appears sufficiently favorable. The
greatest number of inclosing bills passed in any one year of the last
peace does not equal the smallest annual number in the war, and those of
the last year exceed by more than one half the highest year of peace.
But what was my surprise, on looking into the late report of the Secret
Committee of the Lords, to find a list of these bills during the war,
differing in every year, and[48] larger on the whole by nearly one
third! I have checked this account by the statute-book, and find it to
be correct. What new brilliancy, then, does it throw over the prospect,
bright as it was before! The number during the last four years has more
than doubled that of the four years immediately preceding; it has
surpassed the five years of peace, beyond which the Lords' committees
have not gone; it has even surpassed (I have verified the fact) the
whole ten years of peace. I cannot stop here. I cannot advance a single
step in this inquiry without being obliged to cast my eyes back to the
period when I first knew the country. These bills, which had begun in
the reign of Queen Anne, had passed every year in greater or less
numbers from the year 1723; yet in all that space of time they had not
reached the amount of any two years during the present war; and though
soon after that time they rapidly increased, still at the accession of
his present Majesty they were far short of the number passed in the four
years of hostilities.
In my first letter I mentioned the state of our inland navigation,
neglected as it had been from the reign of King William to the time of
my observation. It was not till the present reign that the Duke of
Bridgewater's canal first excited a spirit of speculation and adventure
in this way. This spirit showed itself, but necessarily made no great
progress, in the American war. When peace was restored, it began of
course to work with more sensible effect; yet in ten years from that
event the bills passed on that subject were not so many as from the year
1793 to the present session of Parliament. From what I can trace on the
statute-book, I am confident that all the capital expended in these
projects during the peace bore no degree of proportion (I doubt, on
very grave consideration, whether all that was ever so expended was
equal) to the money which has been raised for the same purposes since
the war.[49] I know that in the last four years of peace, when they rose
regularly and rapidly, the sums specified in the acts were not near one
third of the subsequent amount. In the last session of Parliament, the
Grand Junction Company, as it is called, having sunk half a million, (of
which I feel the good effects at my own door,) applied to your House for
permission to subscribe half as much more among themselves. This Grand
Junction is an inosculation of the Grand Trunk; and in the present
session, the latter company has obtained the authority of Parliament to
float two hundred acres of land, for the purpose of forming a reservoir,
thirty feet deep, two hundred yards wide at the head, and two miles in
length: a lake which may almost vie with that which once fed the now
obliterated canal of Languedoc.
The present war is, above all others of which we have heard or read, a
war against landed property. That description of property is in its
nature the firm base of every stable government,--and has been so
considered by all the wisest writers of the old philosophy, from the
time of the Stagyrite, who observes that the agricultural class of all
others is the least inclined to sedition. We find it to have been so
regarded in the practical politics of antiquity, where they are brought
more directly homo to our understandings and bosoms in the history of
Borne, and above all, in the writings of Cicero. The country tribes were
always thought more respectable than those of the city. And if in our
own history there is any one circumstance to which, under God, are to be
attributed the steady resistance, the fortunate issue, and sober
settlement of all our struggles for liberty, it is, that, while the
landed interest, instead of forming a separate body, as in other
countries, has at all times been in close connection and union with the
other great interests of the country, it has been spontaneously allowed
to lead and direct and moderate all the rest. I cannot, therefore, but
see with singular gratification, that, during a war which has been
eminently made for the destruction of the lauded proprietors, as well as
of priests and kings, as much has been done by public works for the
permanent benefit of their stake in this country as in all the rest of
the current century, which now touches to its close. Perhaps after this
it may not be necessary to refer to private observation; but I am
satisfied that in general the rents of lands have been considerably
increased: they are increased very considerably, indeed, if I may draw
any conclusion from my own little property of that kind. I am not
ignorant, however, where our public burdens are most galling. But all of
this class will consider who they are that are principally menaced,--how
little the men of their description in other countries, where this
revolutionary fury has but touched, have been found equal to their own
protection,--how tardy and unprovided and full of anguish is their
flight, chained down as they are by every tie to the soil,--how
helpless they are, above all other men, in exile, in poverty, in need,
in all the varieties of wretchedness; and then let them well weigh what
are the burdens to which they ought not to submit for their own
salvation.