A Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire; The Rise and Progress of the Funding System Explained ... (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1814 Excerpt: ...that they enhance the price of labour, and by that means cramp foreign trade. These apprehensions, however, will vanish when it is considered, that although a degree of wretchedness will prevail in every country, the poor, comparatively speaking, are better fed, clothed, and lodged in this country, than the same classes in any other part of Europe; and infinitely more so than when the taxes were not one twentieth part of what they are at the present time. In this view of the subject, it has been asserted by some political economists, that the poor are subject to no taxes in any country, unless where it can be shewn that their condition in society is worse than before taxes were imposed. It cannot be denied, that taxes not only advance the price of labour, but of all articles of consumption; it must, however, at the same time be admitted, that an equal circulation of property, effected by any other cause, would advance them in the same ratio. It is not the pressure of the public debt, which increases the expences of living, but the riches generated by it. It is observable in all poor countries, that provisions and labour may be procured on much cheaper terms than where opulence prevails. The foreign trade is in the same situation. On a due consideration of the subject, it will be found to be extended for the reasons already explained; and it may be added, that even if the wages of the labouring poor should greatly exceed their present amount occasioned by a still further increase of the Domestic Debt, the productions of labour or industry exported would increase nearly in the same proportion, arising from the augmented circulation of property which this increase would occasion. This reasoning proceeds upon an aphorism, which will scarcely be disputed, namely...