Three hundred representatives fairly elected are sufficient for all the purposes to which legislation can apply. They may be divided into two or three houses, or meet in one, as in France. If an allowance of £500 per annum were made to each representative, the yearly cost would be £15,000. The expense of the official departments could not reasonably exceed £425,000. All revenue officers are paid out of the monies they collect, and therefore are not in this estimation.
Taking one million and a half as a sufficient peace establishment for all the honest purposes of government, there will remain a surplus of upwards of six millions out of the present current expenses. How is this surplus to be disposed of?
The first step would be to abolish the poor rates entirely, and in lieu thereof to make a remission of taxes to the poor of double the amount of the present poor rates—viz., four millions annually out of the surplus taxes. This money could be distributed so as to provide £4 annually per head for the support of children of poor families, and to provide also for the cost of education of over a million children; to give annuities of £10 each for the aged poor over sixty, and of £6 each for the poor over fifty; to give donations of £1 each on occasions of births in poor families, and marriages of the poor; to make allowances for funeral expenses of persons travelling for work, and dying at a distance from their friends; and to furnish employment for the casual poor of the metropolis, where modes of relief are necessary that are not required in the country.
Of the sum remaining after these deductions, half a million should be spent in pensioning disbanded soldiers and in increasing the pay of the soldiers who shall remain. The burdensome house and window tax, amounting to over half a million annually, should be taken off. There yet remains over a million surplus, which might be used for special purposes, or applied to relief of taxation as circumstances require.
For the commutation tax there should be substituted an estate tax rising from 3d. in the pound on the first £500 to 20s. in the pound on the twenty-third £1,000. Every thousand beyond the twenty-third would thus produce no profit but by dividing the estate, and thereby would be extirpated the overgrown influence arising from the unnatural law of primogeniture.
Of all nations in Europe there is none so much interested in the French revolution as England. Enemies for ages, the opportunity now presents itself of amicably closing the scene and joining their efforts to reform the rest of Europe. Such an alliance, together with that of Holland, could propose with effect a general dismantling of all the navies in Europe, to a certain proportion to be agreed upon. This will save to France and England at least two million sterling annually to each, and their relative force would be in the same proportion as it is now. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expense.
Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two revolutions of America and France. By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world, and by the latter in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.