The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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TORY SENTIMENTS 605 bo the directions in which changes should be effected is very 4D. 1689 obvious. The glaring inequalities® of the land tax had been 3, 1,401 somewhat reduced, and the moneyed men had been forced to gl snr contribute through the inhabited house duty and the assessed taxes, But Pitt was desirous that the poorer classes should be, so far as possible, relieved from the burden. This view comes out in the measures which he took, when the prosperity of the country enabled him to reduce the Government demands. In 1792 he was able to repeal the tax on women servants? in poorer families, the taxes on carts and waggons, the window tax on small houses?, a portion of the tax on candles, and a recently imposed duty on malts, Following the same principles, Pitt showed himself most reluctant to impose any taxes upon necessaries, when the Revolutionary War unexpectedly burst upon him; and he devoted himself, so far as possible, to raising the necessary supplies by taxes which should fall upon property’. The so as to first of these was an expedient which Adam Smith had veonars of recommended, and which North had attempted, of taxing Jersons? successions®. North's tax had been easily evaded as it was levied on the receipts given by legatees, but executors zonnived at a fraud on the revenue, and did not insist on having receipts. Pitt taxed the property while still in the hands of the executors. He originally intended to include 1 The tax since 1697 had been regarded as a fixed sum of about £500,000, when the tax was 1s. in the pound, and thus it got into the same groove as the tenths and fifteenths had done in 1334, and the Tudor subsidies at a later date (Vol. 1. 547, 548). Further *it happened that as the tradesmen and others assessed in respect of their personalty died off or departed from the particular district, the assessors charged their quota upon the land, adding it to the previous charge upon .he landowners; so that the tax, which was intended to rest in the first instance upon goods and offices, the residue only being charged on the land—intended for & general tax upon property, gradually became in effect a tax on land, and a most unfair one, because originally the division of the whole sum representing the rate was extremely unequal, and as the relative riches of the different counties speci- fically charged altered, the unfairness increased.” (Dowell, op. cit. 11. 53.) On Davenant’s criticism of the assessment, see above, p. 430 n. 4. 2 This tax had been proposed in 1785 when the group of assessed taxes was formed ; this and a shortlived tax on shops, according to the rent of the shop, were intended to draw from the shopkeeper class. Dowell, mm. 90. 25 Geo. ITI. c. 43 and ec. 30. 8 With less than seven windows. Dowell, 1r. 197. ! Compare Pitt's oration, Feb. 17, 1792. Parl. Hust. xx1x. 816. * Dowell, mm. 213. 8 Wealth of Nations, 863.

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