In the last eleven years there have been no less than three solemn inquiries into the finances of the kingdom, by three different committees of your House. The first was in the year 1786. On that occasion, I remember, the report of the committee was examined, and sifted and bolted to the bran, by a gentleman whose keen and powerful talents I have ever admired. He thought there was not sufficient evidence to warrant the pleasing representation which the committee had made of our national prosperity. He did not believe that our public revenue could continue to be so productive as they had assumed. He even went the length of recording his own inferences of doubt in a set of resolutions which now stand upon your journals. And perhaps the retrospect on which the report proceeded did not go far enough back to allow any sure and satisfactory average for a ground of solid calculation. But what was the event? When the next committee sat, in 1791, they found, that, on an average of the last four years, their predecessors had fallen short, in their estimate of the permanent taxes, by more than three hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Surely, then, if I can show, that, in the produce of those same taxes, and more particularly of such as affect articles of luxurious use and consumption, the four years of the war have equalled those four years of peace, flourishing as they were beyond the most sanguine speculations, I may expect to hear no more of the distress occasioned by the war.
The additional burdens which have been laid on some of those same articles might reasonably claim some allowance to be made. Every new advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to retrench the quantity of his consumption; and if, upon the whole, he pays the same, his property, computed by the standard of what he voluntarily pays, must remain the same. But I am willing to forego that fair advantage in the inquiry. I am willing that the receipts of the permanent taxes which existed before January, 1793, should be compared during the war, and during the period of peace which I have mentioned. I will go further. Complete accounts of the year 1791 were separately laid before your House. I am ready to stand by a comparison of the produce of four years up to the beginning of the year 1792 with that of the war. Of the year immediately previous to hostilities I have not been able to obtain any perfect documents; but I have seen enough to satisfy me, that, although a comparison including that year might be less favorable, yet it would not essentially injure my argument.
You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands. That consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the necessity of the war. It is a question which I have long since discussed. I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in fact, any such necessity as we hear every day asserted, to furnish a miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it, all that is dear to man. It will be more than sufficient for that purpose, if I can make it appear that we have been stationary during the war. What, then, will be said, if, in reality, it shall be proved that there is every indication of increased and increasing wealth, not only poured into the grand reservoir of the national capital, but diffused through all the channels of all the higher classes, and giving life and activity, as it passes, to the agriculture, the manufactures, the commerce, and the navigation of the country?
The Finance Committee which has been appointed in this session has already made two reports. Every conclusion that I had before drawn, as you know, from my own observation, I have the satisfaction of seeing there confirmed by that great public authority. Large as was the sum by which the committee of 1791 found the estimate of 1786 to have been exceeded in the actual produce of four years of peace, their own estimate has been exceeded during the war by a sum more than one third larger. The same taxes have yielded more than half a million beyond their calculation. They yielded this, notwithstanding the stoppage of the distilleries, against which, you may remember, I privately remonstrated. With an allowance for that defalcation, they have yielded sixty thousand pounds annually above the actual average of the preceding four years of peace. I believe this to have been without parallel in all former wars. If regard be had to the great and unavoidable burdens of the present war, I am confident of the fact.
But let us descend to particulars. The taxes which go by the general name of Assessed Taxes comprehend the whole, or nearly the whole, domestic establishment of the rich. They include some things which belong to the middling, and even to all but the very lowest classes. They now consist of the duties on houses and windows, on male servants, horses, and carriages. They did also extend to cottages, to female servants, wagons, and carts used in husbandry, previous to the year 1792,—when, with more enlightened policy, at the moment that the possibility of war could not be out of the contemplation of any statesman, the wisdom of Parliament confined them to their present objects. I shall give the gross assessment for five years, as I find it in the Appendix to the Second Report of your committee.
1791 ending 5th April 1792 £1,706,334
1792 1793 1,585,991
1793 1794 1,597,623
1794 1795 1,608,196
1795 1796 1,625,874
Here will be seen a gradual increase during the whole progress of the war; and if I am correctly informed, the rise in the last year, after every deduction that can be made, affords the most consoling and encouraging prospect. It is enormously out of all proportion.
There are some other taxes which seem to have a reference to the same general head. The present minister many years ago subjected bricks and tiles to a duty under the excise. It is of little consequence to our present consideration, whether these materials have been employed in building more commodious, more elegant, and more magnificent habitations, or in enlarging, decorating, and remodelling those which sufficed for our plainer ancestors. During the first two years of the war, they paid so largely to the public revenue, that in 1794 a new duty was laid upon them, which was equal to one half of the old, and which has produced upwards of 165,000l. in the last three years. Yet, notwithstanding the pressure of this additional weight,[40] there has been an actual augmentation in the consumption. The only two other articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold and silver plate, and the customs on glass plates. This latter is now, I believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the catalogue of our imports. If it were wholly to vanish, I should not think we were ruined. Both the duties have risen, during the war, very considerably in proportion to the total of their produce.
We have no tax among us on the most necessary articles of food. The receipts of our Custom-House, under the head of Groceries, afford us, however, some means of calculating our luxuries of the table. The articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at home. Upon this principle, adding them all together, (with the exception of sugar, for a reason which I shall afterwards mention,) I find that they have produced, in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000l., and in the other mode upwards of 165,000l., more during the war than in peace.[41] An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another on coffee, and a third on raisins,—an article, together with currants, of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined. The balance in favor of our argument would have been much enhanced, if our coffee and fruit ships from the Mediterranean had arrived, last year, at their usual season. They do not appear in these accounts. This was one consequence arising (would to God that none more afflicting to Italy, to Europe, and the whole civilized world had arisen!) from our impolitic and precipitate desertion of that important maritime station. As to sugar,[42] I have excluded it from the groceries, because the account of the customs is not a perfect criterion of the consumption, much having been reëxported to the North of Europe, which used to be supplied by France; and in the official papers which I have followed there are no materials to furnish grounds for computing this reëxportation. The increase on the face of our entries is immense during the four years of war,—little short of thirteen hundred thousand pounds.
The increase of the duties on beer has been regularly progressive, or nearly so, to a very large amount.[43] It is a good deal above a million, and is more than equal to one eighth of the whole produce. Under this general head some other liquors are included,—cider, perry, and mead, as well as vinegar and verjuice; but these are of very trifling consideration. The excise duties on wine, having sunk a little during the first two years of the war, were rapidly recovering their level again. In 1795 a heavy additional duty was imposed upon them, and a second in the following year; yet, being compared with four years of peace to 1790, they actually exhibit a small gain to the revenue. And low as the importation may seem in 1796, when contrasted with any year since the French treaty in 1787, it is still more than 3000 tuns above the average importation for three years previous to that period. I have added sweets, from which our factitious wines are made; and I would have added spirits, but that the total alteration of the duties in 1789, and the recent interruption of our distilleries, rendered any comparison impracticable.