mean to come to any thing like the true state of the British trade. They compensate, and they more than compensate, every thing which the author can cut off with any appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the object to reduce to 2,500,0007. In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory he is obliged to assume his facts and then, if you allow his facts, they will not support his conclusions. What if all he says of the state of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766 than from those of 1754? If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined. Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song. They have a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the publick prosperity. They overlook us like the malevolent being of the poet: Tritonida conspicit arcem Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem; Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit. It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that cast an occasional damp upon trade. Their imaginations entail these accidents upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests. This must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain. But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to the course of events, it cannot long subsist. In the three last years, we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount perhaps of our former exportation. So that in this article the balance must be 2,000,000l. against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of gain, the other in the encrease of expenditure. But none of the author's promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready to take credit for any encrease of trade or excise, that may arise from the happy circumstance of a good harvest. This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of labour. With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him to prove it. Take average and not accident, the grand and first necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not against labour, which is its true counterpoise, but against money. Does he call the It is dearer in some places, and rather cheaper in others; price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per quarter in London, dear? He must know that fuel (an object of the highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper than in any part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular accidents. If it has had any thing like an uniform rise, this enhancement may easily be proved not to be owing to the encrease of taxes, but to uniform encrease of consumption and of money. Diminish the latter, and meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much dearer in effect; because fewer will be in a condition to buy. Thus your apparent plenty will be real indigence. At present, even under temporary disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here than any where else; it is continued without any interruption of Lents or meagre days; it is sustained and growing even with the encrease of our taxes. But some have the art of converting even the signs of national prosperity into symptoms of decay and ruin. And our author, who loudly disclaims popularity, never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar popular prejudices and humours, in hopes to captivate the crowd. Even those peevish dispositions which grow out of some transitory suffering, those passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere, are by him industriously figured into frightful shapes, in order first to terrify and then to govern the populace. 80 It was not enough for the author's purpose to give this false and discouraging picture of the state of his own country. It did not fully answer his end, to exaggerate her burthens, to depreciate her successes, and to vilify her character. Nothing had been done, unless the situation of France were exalted in proportion as that of England had been abased. The reader will excuse the citation I make at length from his book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion. His confidence is indeed unparalleled, and altogether of the heroick cast: “If our rival nations were in the same circum"stances with ourselves, the augmentation of our "taxes would produce no ill consequences: if we were obliged to raise our prices, they must, from "the same causes, do the like, and could take no advantage by under-selling and under-working 66 66 66 us. But the alarming consideration to Great "Britain is, that France is not in the same con"dition. Her distresses, during the war, were great, but they were immediate; her want of credit, as has been said, compelled her to impoverish her people, by raising the greatest part of her supplies within the year; but the "burthens she imposed on them were, in a great measure, temporary, and must be greatly di "minished by a few years of peace. She could procure no considerable loans, therefore she has "mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as those "Great Britain has imposed in perpetuity for but it must soon all come to a level. "payment of interest. Peace must, therefore, | him produce the funds for this astonishing annual 66 soon re-establish her commerce and manufac"tures, especially as the comparative lightness of taxes, and the cheapness of living, in that country, must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and artificers." On this the author rests the merit of his whole system. And on this point I will join issue with him. If France is not at least in the same condition, even in that very condition which the author falsely represents to be ours, if the very reverse of his proposition be not true, then I will admit his state of the nation to be just; and all his inferences from that state to be logical and conclusive. It is not surprising, that the author should hazard our opinion of his veracity. That is a virtue on which great statesmen do not perhaps pique themselves so much but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should stake on a very poor calculation of chances, all credit for care, for accuracy, and for knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He is rash and inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a publick ignorant and inattentive. But he may find himself in that respect, as in many others, greatly mistaken. addition to all her vast preceding taxes, an addition equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt taxes of England taken together. But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most unaccountable of all errours, no less an errour than that of mistaking the identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised within the year. Can it be conceived that any man only entered into the first rudiments of finance should make so egregious a blunder; should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition; should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the comparative states of France and England? But it will be said, that it was his misfortune to be ill-informed. Not at all. A man of any loose general knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never could have been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately rejected so wild and extravagant an account. terms, indeed on the most exorbitant usury. The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it In order to contrast the light and vigorous con- might have been, did enable her (not to raise withdition of France with that of England, weak, and in the year) but to borrow the very sums the author sinking under her burthens, he states, in his tenth mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, page, that France had raised 50,314,3787. sterling making, in the author's computation, 50,314,3787. by taxes within the several years from the year The credit of France was low; but it was not 1756 to 1762 both inclusive. An Englishman annihilated. She did not derive, as our author must stand aghast at such a representation: To chooses to assert, any advantages from the debility find France able to raise within the year sums of her credit. Its consequence was the natural little inferiour to all that we were able even to bor-one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad row on interest with all the resources of the greatext and most established credit in the world! Europe was filled with astonishment when they saw England borrow in one year twelve millions. It was thought, and very justly, no small proof of national strength and financial skill, to find a fund for the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest of this, computed with the one per cent. annuities, amounted only to 600,000l. a year. This, I say, was thought a surprising effort even of credit. But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to it for several years together. Suppose some Jacob Henriques had proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation by raising ten millions within the year: he would have been considered, not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the publick; it as a poor visionary, who had run mad on suples and taxes. They who know that the whole and tax of England, at 4s. in the pound, raises But two millions, will not easily apprehend that ativ such sums as the author has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed omething in every year of its continuance; let In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the publick, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to do, is to avoid gross errours and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the proper officer to lay the accounts before the house. But the reader must judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The author speaks of France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within the year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely worthy of notice. I affirm that she borrowed large sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated an immense debt. This debt continued after the war infinitely to embarrass her affairs; and to find some means for its reduction was then and has ever since been the first object of her policy. But she has so little succeeded in all her efforts, that the perpetual debt of France is at this hour little short of 100,000,000l. sterling; and she stands charged with at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents and tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the Hotel de Ville of Paris, which are by no means her sole payments of that nature, amount to 139,000,000 of livres, that is, to 6,318,000 pounds; besides billets au porteur, and various detached and unfunded debts, to a | them in one point, it has only burthened them the great amount, and which bear an interest. At the end of the war, the interest payable on her debt amounted to upwards of seven millions sterling. M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the French finances, was called in, to aid in the reduction of an interest, so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon those who are to pay it. After many unsuccessful efforts towards reconciling arbitrary reduction with publick credit, he was obliged to go the plain high road of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent. upon a very great part of the capital debt of that kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to the destruction of future credit, produced about 500,000l. a year, which was carried to their Caisse d'amortissement or sinking fund. But so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behind-hand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances: and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard to her debt. Every body knows that the principal of the debt is but a name; the interest is the only thing which can distress a nation. Take this idea, which will not be disputed, and compare the interest paid by England with that paid by France: The author cannot complain, that I state the interest paid by England as too low. He takes it himself as the extremest term. Nobody who knows any thing of the French finances will affirm that I state the interest paid by that kingdom too high. It might be easily proved to amount to a great deal more: even this is near two millions above what is paid by England. more heavily in another. The Taille, that grievous and destructive imposition, which all their financiers lament, without being able to remove or to replace, has been augmented no less than six millions of livres, or 270,000 pounds English. A further augmentation of this or other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary to their affairs so exceedingly remote from either truth or verisimilitude is the author's amazing assertion, that the burthens of France in the war were in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few years of peace. In the next place, if the people of France are not lightened of taxes, so neither is the state disburthened of charges. I speak from very good information, that the annual income of that state is at this day 30 millions of livres, or 1,350,000. sterling, short of a provision for their ordinary peace establishment; so far are they from the attempt or even hope to discharge any part of the capital of their enormous debt. Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labours the whole body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly look for some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system: the effect of which on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to conjecture. In the third point of view, their credit. Let the reader cast his eye on a table of the price of French funds, as they stood a few weeks ago, a compared with the state of some of our English stocks, even in their present low condition: This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince even prejudice and obstnacy, that if France and England are not in the same condition, (as the author affirms they are not,) the difference is infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burthens and discharging debts. Such is the true comparative state of the two There are three standards to judge of the good kingdoms in those capital points of view. Now condition of a nation with regard to its finances. as to the nature of the taxes which provide for 1st, The relief of the people. 2nd, The equal- this debt, as well as for their ordinary establishity of supplies to establishments. 3d, The statements, the author has thought proper to affirm of publick credit. Try France on all these standards. Although our author very liberally administers relief to the people of France, its government has not been altogether so gracious. Since the peace she has taken off but a single vingtieme, or shilling in the pound, and some small matter in the capitation. But, if the government has relieved A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the pre 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 burthen, does not exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal sumed fortune of every person below the degree of a gentlema charges, from which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of 100 years, and which were in kind, as well as burthen, 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 noble, 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 quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer? 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 any thing 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, butchers-meat, fish, fowls, every thing. 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 50s. 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 2d. 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 principal nations on the continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am fairly warranted to assert, 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 constituted, and the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamours and complaints. As to our neighbour and rival France, in addition to what I have here suggested, I say, and when the author Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the con**er at 11 sous or about 57 the pound. What it is at present, i am not informed. Even this will appear no trivial imposition. s; 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 publick service. I am not one of those who choose to take the author's word for this happy and flourishing 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 shewn groundless, representation of our own affairs in England. 66 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 assures 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 governours, or sink them into a despondency of "the publick welfare." I readily admit this apology for his intentions. God 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 shine 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 errour, to imagine the loudest complainers for the publick 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 In London, salt may be had at a penny farthing per pound from the last retailer. all intention of producing. To verify this, the reader has only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn in his 32d 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 a 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 publick 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 burthened pub"lick. A declining trade and decreasing specie. "The power of the crown never so much extended over the great; but the great without influence 66 over the lower sort. Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the mul❝titude 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 constitution. No reverence "for the customs of our ancestors. No attach"ment but to private interest, nor any zeal but "for selfish gratifications. Trade and manufac"tures 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 domestick, or the conquest of a foreign enemy."-Gloomy enough, God knows. The author well observes,* that a mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect without horrour; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to bear its description. He ought to have added, that no man of common discretion ought to have exhibited it to the publick, if it were true; or of common honesty, if it were false. 66 66 66 6. equally astonishing and pleasing. Never was financier less embarrassed by the burthen of estab lishments, 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 assigning reason, army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries; nothing can stand be fore 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 burthen to the publick. 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 assent of listening and obsequious friends; in publick, the venal cry and prepared vote of a passive senate; confirm him in habits of begging the question with impunity, and asserting without thinking himself obliged to prove. 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. Had This estimate which he gives, is the great groundwork of his plan for the national redemp tion; 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 es isting estimates as they stand; and then to shew what may be practically and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say, be the natural course; and what would be expected from a me 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 forme speculation of the same kind, which was in the I mind of the minister of the year 1764. Indeed! never existed any where else. § "The plan, says he, with his usual ease, "has been already 66 formed, and the outline drawn, by the admins"tration of 1764. I shall attempt to fill up the "void and obliterated parts, and trace its opera "tion. The standing expence of the present (h "projected) peace establishment, improved by the experience of the two last years, may be thes "estimated;" and he estimates it at 3,468,161. Here too it would be natural to expect so: reasons for condemning the subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some ar ments in favour of his new project; which has some articles exceeded, in others fallen short, but on the whole is much below his old one. Hardl a word on any of these points, the only points however that are in the least essential; for unless yu. |