of the revenue from confumption. Befides the acquifition of fo much new, this article, to fpeak of no other, has rather increafed under the pref fure of all thofe additional taxes to which the author is pleased to attribute its deftruction. But as the author has made his grand effort against thofe moderate, judicious, and neceffary levies, which fupport all the dignity, the credit, and the power of his country, the reader will excufe a little further detail on this fubject; that we may fee how little oppreffive those taxes are on the fhoulders of the publick, with which he labours fo earnestly to load its imagination. imagination. For this purpofe we take the state of that specifick article upon which the two capital burthens of the war leaned the moft immediately, by the additional duties on malt, and upon beer.

Average of ftrong beer, brewed in eight

years before the additional malt and

Barrels,

Here is the effect of two fuch daring taxes as 3d. by the bufhel additional on malt, and 3s. by the

barrel

barrel additional on beer. Two impofitions laid without remiffion one upon the neck of the other; and laid upon an object which before had been immenfely loaded. They did not in the leaft impair the confumption: it has grown under them. It appears that, upon the whole, the people did not feel fo much inconvenience from the new duties as to oblige them to take refuge in the private brewery. Quite the contrary happened in both thefe refpects in the reign of King William; and it happened from much flighter impofitions *. No people can long confume a commodity for which they are not well able to pay. An enlightened reader laughs at the inconfiftent chimera of our author, of a people univerfally luxurious, and at the fame time oppreffed with taxes and declining in trade. For my part, I cannot look on thefe duties as the author does. He fees nothing but the burthen. I can perceive the burthen as well as

* Although the publick brewery has confiderably encreased in this latter period, the produce of the malt tax has been fomething lefs than in the former; this cannot be attributed to the new malt tax. Had this been the cause of the leffened confumption, the publick brewery, fo much more burthened, must have felt it more. The cause of this diminution of the malt tax, I take to have been principally owing to the greater dearness of corn in the fecond period than in the first, which, in all its confequences, affected the people in the country much more than thofe in the towns. But the revenue from confumption was not on the whole impaired, as we have feep in the foregoing page. F 2

he;

he; but I cannot avoid contemplating alfo the ftrength that fupports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable affurances of the future vigour, and the ample refources, of this great mifreprefented country; and can never prevail on myfelf to make complaints which have no caufe, in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.

When a representation is built on truth and nature, one member fupports the other, and mutual lights are given and received from every part. Thus, as our manufacturers have not deferted, nor the manufacture left us, nor the confumption declined, nor the revenue funk; fo neither has trade, which is at once the refult, measure, and cause of the whole, in the leaft decayed, as our author has thought proper fometimes to affirm, conftantly to fuppofe, as if it were the most indifputable of all propofitions. The reader will fee below the comparative state of our trade * in three of the best

years before our increase of debt and taxes, and with it the three last years fince the author's date of our ruin.

In the laft three years the whole of our exports was between 44 and 45 millions. In the three years preceding the war, it was no more than from 35 to 36 millions. The average balance of the former period was £.3,706,000; of the latter, fomething above four millions. It is true, that whilst the impreffions of the author's deftructive war continued, our trade was greater than it is at prefent. One of the neceffary confequences of the peace was, that France muft gradually recover a part of those markets of which the had been originally in poffeffion. However, after all these deductions, ftill the grofs trade in the worst year of the present is better than in the beft year of any former period of peace,

Total imports, value,

A

very great part of

Exports, ditto.

£.

16,164,532

our taxes, if not the greateft, has been impofed fince the beginning of the century. On the author's principles, this continual increase of taxes must have ruined our trade, or at least entirely checked its growth, But I have a manufcript of Davenant, which contains an abstract of our trade for the years 1703 and 1704; by which it appears, that the whole export from England did not then exceed £.6,552,019. It is now confiderably more than double that amount. Yet England was then a rich and flourishing nation.

The author endeavours to derogate from the balance in our favour as it ftands on the entries, and reduces it from four millions as it there appears to no more than £.2,500,000, His obfervation on the loofenefs and inaccuracy of the export entries is juft; and that the errour is always an errour of excess, I readily admit. But because, as ufual, he has wholly omitted fome very material facts, his conclufion is as erroneous as the entries he complains of,

On this point of the custom-house entries I fhall make a few obfervations. 1ft. The inaccuracy of thefe entries can extend only to FREE GOODS, that is, to fuch British products and manufactures, as are exported without drawback and without bounty; which do not in general amount to more than two-thirds at the very utmost of the whole export even of our home products. The valuable articles