33 ([return])
[ Charles, like his predecessors and successors, finding that war was the harvest of governments, engaged in a war with the Dutch, the expense of which increased the annual expenditure to L1,800,000 as stated under the date of 1666; but the peace establishment was but L1,200,000.]
34 ([return])
[ Poor-rates began about the time of Henry VIII., when the taxes began to increase, and they have increased as the taxes increased ever since.]
35 ([return])
[ Reckoning the taxes by families, five to a family, each family pays on an average L12 7s. 6d. per annum. To this sum are to be added the poor-rates. Though all pay taxes in the articles they consume, all do not pay poor-rates. About two millions are exempted: some as not being house-keepers, others as not being able, and the poor themselves who receive the relief. The average, therefore, of poor-rates on the remaining number, is forty shillings for every family of five persons, which make the whole average amount of taxes and rates L14 17s. 6d. For six persons L17 17s. For seven persons L2O 16s. 6d. The average of taxes in America, under the new or representative system of government, including the interest of the debt contracted in the war, and taking the population at four millions of souls, which it now amounts to, and it is daily increasing, is five shillings per head, men, women, and children. The difference, therefore, between the two governments is as under:
England America
L s. d. L s. d.
For a family of five persons 14 17 6 1 5 0
For a family of six persons 17 17 0 1 10 0
For a family of seven persons 20 16 6 1 15 0
36 ([return])
[ Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor. They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country towns and villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance occasions a great loss of time. Education, to be useful to the poor, should be on the spot, and the best method, I believe, to accomplish this is to enable the parents to pay the expenses themselves. There are always persons of both sexes to be found in every village, especially when growing into years, capable of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings each (and that not more than six months each year) would be as much as some livings amount to in the remotest parts of England, and there are often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such an income would be acceptable. Whatever is given on this account to children answers two purposes. To them it is education—to those who educate them it is a livelihood.]
37 ([return])
[ The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy are exempt, is almost one million more than the present commutation tax, being by the returns of 1788, L1,666,152—and, consequently, they ought to take on themselves the amount of the commutation tax, as they are already exempted from one which is almost a million greater.]