1. Act abolishing Tenure by Knight Service, etc., 1660—2. Navigation Act, 1660—3. Proposals for Free Export of Gold and Silver, 1660—4. An Attack on the Navigation Acts, c. 1663—5. Free Coinage at the Mint Proclaimed, 1666—6. The East India Company and the Interlopers, 1684—7. Foundation of the Bank of England, 1694—8. The Need for the Recoinage of 1696—9. Speech by Sir Robert Walpole on the Salt Duties, 1732—10. Pitt's Sinking Fund Act, 1786—11. The Suspension of Cash Payments, 1797—12. Pitt's Speech on the Income Tax, 1798—13. Foreign Trade in the early Nineteenth Century, 1812—14. Debate on the Corn Law, 1815—15. The Corn Law of 1815—16. Free Trade Petition, 1820—17. The Foundation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, 1839—18. The Bank Charter Act, 1844—19. Debate on the Corn Laws, 1846.
This section illustrates various departments of Government policy: taxation and revenue (Nos. 1, 9 and 12), public debts (Nos. 7 and 10), fiscal and trade policy (Nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 13-17, 19), the coinage (Nos. 3, 5 and 8), and the national Bank (Nos. 7, 11, and 18). The specimens of revenue policy begin with the Act by which Charles II abandoned feudal dues in exchange for a general and hereditary excise (No. 1). The principle involved in this transaction may be compared with Sir Robert Walpole's remarks on the question of justice in taxation (No. 9) and with Pitt's speech on introducing the Income Tax in 1798, which also gives a survey of the whole financial position and a defence of the policy of paying for wars out of hand (No. 12). The opposite policy, of war-loans, had been adopted earlier, and the French wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries established the funding system. An outline is given of the Sinking Fund by which it was supposed that this national liability could be reduced while it was being created (No. 10). The foundation of the Bank of England (No. 7) was an important step in the policy of national loans as well as an encouragement to the growth of capital and capitalist industry. The French wars at the end of the eighteenth century produced a crisis in the management of the Bank's reserve; an official report explains the causes of the panic which led to the suspension of cash payments and also shows the deliberate policy by which the suspension was continued till 1819 (No. 11). This was the first controversy of great importance on the subject of currency since the seventeenth century, when the government of Charles II had adopted the policy of allowing free export and free coinage of Gold and Silver (Nos. 3 and 5). The gradual deterioration of the coinage which led to the recoinage of 1696 is illustrated by a contemporary description (No. 8). The Bank Charter Act (No. 18) shows the financial aspect of rapid national expansion in the nineteenth century and the method adopted to give stability to credit by limiting the issue of unsupported paper currency, in the period before the triumph of the cheque system.
The Navigation Act of Charles the second's reign (No. 2) formed part of a system by which the State set itself to encourage particular industries and took a part in the struggle for commercial leadership. (See also Nos. 4 and 6.) The complications of this policy with considerations of revenue and particular interests rapidly increased, while the manufacturing export trade became more important (No. 13). A reaction led by the Economists had begun in the latter part of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century the battle raged over the special protection successfully claimed by the Agricultural Interest in the depression at the end of the Napoleonic wars (No. 15). The debates and petitions (No. 14, No. 16, No. 19) bristle with the new Political Economy. They also give an indication of the new social class created by the Industrial Revolution and of the struggle of the landowners with the North of England manufacturers who founded and financed the Anti-Corn-Law League, the most successful of all political associations for an economic object (No. 17).
AUTHORITIES
The most important modern authorities on taxation and finance are: Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes; Seligman, The Income Tax; Kennedy, English Taxation,1640-1799: on currency and banking, Shaw, History of the Currency; Andréadés, History of the Bank of England; Thorold Rogers, The First Nine Years of the Bank of England; Bagehot, Lombard Street: on commercial and fiscal policy; Day, History of Commerce; Levi, History of British Commerce; Hewins, English Trade and Finance; Beer, The Old Colonial System and British Colonial Policy; Hertz, The Old Colonial System; Ashley, Surveys; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, and Rise and Decline of the Free Trade Movement; Bruce, Annals of the East India Company; Holland, The Fall of Protection; Morley, Life of Cobden; Trevelyan, Life of Bright; Nicholson, The English Corn Laws. Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century, analyses economic debates, legislation and conditions in the early nineteenth century.
Bibliographies in Cunningham, op. cit., Day op. cit., Cambridge Modern History, Vols. VI and X, and Grant Robertson, England Under the Hanoverians.
Contemporary.—Parliamentary Paper, XXXV, 1869, gives a summary of public revenue and expenditure, 1688-1869. Important documents for financial history are contained in the seventeenth century Treasury Papers (ed. Shaw). The Advice of the Council of Trade on the Exportation of Gold and Silver, 1660, is in McCulloch's Collection of Tracts on Money. The official history of the suspension of cash payments is in the Reports of Committees on the Restriction in Payments, 1797 (XI), on the High Price of Gold, 1810 (III), and on Cash Payments, 1819 (III).
A collection of literary authorities on monetary questions was made by McCulloch, "A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Money"; it includes Petty's Quantulumcunque, Isaac Newton's Representations, etc. For contemporary opinion on taxation and finance, see Petty, Taxes and Taxation Price; Observations on Reversionary Payments, and The State of the Public Debts; Smith, The Wealth of Nations, and the Speeches of Pitt (Everyman Series), and of Cobden (edited Bright and Rogers). For foreign commerce consult The Diary and Consultation Book of Fort St. George (ed. Pringle), and Reports of Commons Committee on Orders in Council, 1812, together with the pamphlet literature on Colonial policy (see Cunningham op. cit. and McCulloch's Select Collection of Tracts on Commerce).