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.