Forty ditto at
1,000
it
40,000
Two hundred ditto at
500
u
100,000
Three hundred ditto at 200
u
60,000
Five hundred ditto at
100
u
50,000
Seven hundred ditto at 75
it
52,500
497,500L.
If a nation chose, it might deduct four per cent, from all the offices, and make one of twenty thousand pounds per annum, and style the person who should fill it, King or Madjesty, (1) or give him any other title.
Taking, however, this sum of one million and a half, as an abundant supply for all the expences of government under any form whatever, there will remain a surplus of nearly six millions and a half out of the present taxes, after paying the interest of the national debt; and I have shewn in the Second Part of Rights of Man, what appears to me, the best mode of applying the surplus money; for I am now speaking of expences and savings, and not of systems of government.
1 A friend of Paine advised him against this pun, as too
personal an allusion to George the Third, to whom however
much has been forgiven on account of his mental infirmity.
Yorke, in his account of his visit to Paine, 1802, alludes
to his (Paine's) anecdotes "of humor and benevolence"
concerning George III.—Editor.
I have, in the first place, estimated the poor-rates at two millions annually, and shewn that the first effectual step would be to abolish the poor-rates entirely (which would be a saving of two millions to the house-keepers,) and to remit four millions out of the surplus taxes to the poor, to be paid to them in money, in proportion to the number of children in each family, and the number of aged persons.