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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338 LAISSEZ FAIRE of the revenue. During these ten years the Customs and Excise increased by £1,707,000, or, at the rate of £170,000 a year; while the increase of the export trade was £15,156,000, or, at the annual rate of £1,515,000. Let us next take the twelve years from 1842 to 1853. You remitted during that period of Customs and Excise £13,238,000, and imposed £1,029,000, presenting a balance remitted of £12,209,000, or, an annual average of £1,017,000. What was the effect on revenue ? The Customs and Excise increased £2,656,000, or, at an annual rate of £221,000. When you remitted practi- rally nothing, your Customs revenue, in consequence of the increase of the population, grew at the rate of £170,000 per annum ; and when you remitted £1,017,000 a year, your Customs and Excise revenue grew faster than when you remitted nothing, or next to nothing at all. I ask, is not this a conclusive proof that it is the relaxation and reform of your commercial system which has given to the country the disposition to pay taxes along with the power also which it now possesses to support them? The foreign trade of the country, during the same period, instead of growing at the rate of £1,515,000 a year, grew at the rate of £4,304,000.” The effect of Peel's measures was to demonstrate how much the trade and industry of the country might be encouraged by the re-adjustment of fiscal burdens, but it was none the less a complete realisation of the principle of laissez fuire in fiscal arrangements. The taxation of the country was arranged simply and solely with reference to revenue; all attempts to foster an element in national economic life at the axpense of others were abandoned. Thechange This change could not have been carried through success- DE fully, but for Peel's care to provide a temporary source of A revenue, in order to allow time for trade to respond to the imposition stimulus of reduced tariffs. The particular expedient he adopted, of imposing an income-tax for a time, proved to the public what large supplies might be obtained from this source. Once again its fruitfulness was remarkable. A tax of this ype? had afforded the means by which Pitt maintained the struggle with France, under unexampled conditions of discouragement in 1798. and it served as the source on which wma revenue swpanded. X Vocke. Geschichte der Steuer, p. 523.

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