606 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
all collateral successions to property of every kind, but while 
he succeeded in the measure which dealt with personal 
property (1796), that which concerned real property bad to 
be dropped’. Another expedient was adopted in 1797 which 
told in the same way, and brought pressure to bear directly 
on the propertied classes. This was the so-called Triple 
Assessment; it was intended to be a tax which should fall 
widely, and which should yet be so graduated as to press 
less heavily on the poorer classes than on others’. The 
principle of the assessed taxes was that a man’s return as 
to his establishment for the previous year was the basis of 
payment in the current year according to a graduated scale, 
« which had the effect of increasing the tax for every subject 
of duty in the larger establishmentss.” In 1797 Pitt pro- 
posed that in the following year the payments should be 
greatly increased, those whose assessment had been under 
£25 were to pay a triple amount, those who had paid 
between £30—£40 were to make quadruple payments, while 
assessments of £50 and upwards were to increase fivefold. 
The following year it appeared that a better result could 
be obtained with less elaborate machinery, by imposing a 
ben per cent. income tax on incomes of £200 and upwards. 
It was graduated for incomes between £60 and £200, and 
incomes of less than £60 were free’. The income tax was 
repealed by Addington on the close of the war, but had of 
course to be re-imposed in the following year. A more 
convenient form of return was adopted, under five distinct 
schedules. 
though he This was the principal new departure made under the 
was also . v . 
forced to strain of the great French wars, Pitt and his successors 
oro and Were anxious so far as possible to pay the current expenses 
ina costly out, of the year's receipts. It was only under the pressure 
of necessity that he had recourse to the expedient, which had 
come into fashion in the time of William IIL, and permitted 
himself to throw a burden of debt on posterity. When he 
was forced to fall back on these financial methods, he gave 
the last great example of the disastrous results of misunder- 
! Dowell, mw. 214. 2 Dowell, 220. 3 Parl. Hist. xxx. 1047. 
' Dowell. mo. 221. 5 1b. 1, 222. 
A.D. 1689 
—1776.