If it were acknowledged, that those three interests center in the greatest quantity, as well as the greatest variety and best quality, of the products both of agriculture and industry, and in the greatest consumption of both at the most reasonable rate:
If it were acknowledged, that the Fisc, or Exchequer, owes the whole of its revenue to the produce of the taxes only; and that this produce rising of course as the productions and consumption increase, the interest of the Exchequer can no where be different from that of the three capitalists or proprietors:
If it were acknowledged, that at present nothing can result from several institutions, pretended very wise, but a great diminution in the products and consumption, as well as in the revenue of the Exchequer; because there is nothing so easy as to balance, every where, institutions pretended very wise, by others not less so:
If it were acknowledged, that the necessary expenditure of the Exchequer once ascertained, all diminution of its revenue, occasioned by the pretended very wise institutions, carries with it the necessity of imposing new taxes, in order to make up the deficit of former ones:
If it were acknowledged, that each new tax, increasing necessarily the price of every thing in the nation, for the purpose of supporting, at least, the interior consumption, on which depends the discharge of the taxes, would add to the inconvenience brought about by those pretended very wise regulations, and would soon lead to a decrease in the external consumption, which the nation might have preserved, if other countries did not raise their own prices accordingly, in order to pay with the same products the same quantity of articles which they used to take before the advance occasioned by the taxes; that therefore such a general propagation of increase in prices, being of a general interest to the production and consumption every where, would not fail to take place every where as it has always done, and to dwindle again into a childish play, much beneath the adolescence of the age we live in:
If it were acknowledged, that the general repeal of those pretended very wise institutions could, at the worst, be productive of no other effect within the State, but that of a general rise in the prices, wherever they are not in due proportion to the real values, and a general fall in all the prices, wherever they are fixed by monopoly, and not by the natural equilibrium; but that, whereas nothing but profit can accrue to those who raise their prices, it is very probable that the prices would increase much more almost every where, than they would decrease any where:
If it were, besides, acknowledged that such an increase, or decrease, (it matters not which) soon becoming general and proportionate, (without any other agent to work that miracle, but that reciprocal pressure which establishes a perfect symmetry in a bee-hive,) then no alteration could arise therefrom in the circumstances of the two essential capitalists, since it is perfectly indifferent whether we purchase the labour of others at 5 or 6 per cent. dearer, if we sell our own labour in proportion:
If it were acknowledged, that in regard to the money proprietor, whether dependant or capitalist, nothing can result from it but the certainty of procuring henceforth and for ever, at the most equitable price, that which he had paid for hitherto according to the rate set on it by monopoly, and often by a scarcity cunningly prepared and managed:
If it were acknowledged, that as to the external interests of the State, no other effect can result from the general repeal of those pretended very wise institutions, but the facilitating of all the branches of foreign correspondence, the opening of new channels of consumption, the encouragement of all kinds of production, of which consumption is the very soul, and the power of obtaining every where, at the most equitable prices, by means of competition, the most equitable share we have a right to expect in those gifts which nature, in all probability, has not bestowed on any part of the world, to confine them to that particular spot: