The author comes at laft to his plan for raifing the immenfe fum of 500 millions of livres a-year, by means of one fingle tax, but a tax which would bear at once and in the faireft proportion on every clafs of men-a tax on wheat and fuch other grain as is ufed in France in making bread. He eftimates the quantity of wheat neceffary for feeding 24 millions of people at 48 millions of septiers *. A duty of 11 livres 10 fous + per feptier, on 16 millions of feptiers of wheat ufed by the working part of the community, would produce Ditto of 8 livres 5 fous per feptier on 16 millions Total of the produce of the new duty on the 184,000,000 132,000,000 316,000,000 184,000,000 500,000,000 The author next proceeds to anfwer, with great ability, the objections that might be ftarted against this tax: he obferves that of the fum of 316 millions to be raised on the 16 millions of working people, one half would be paid by those who cultivate the earth, the other by those who are employed in trades and manufactures. Of the former he speaks firft. The fhare which they must bear of this new tax amounts to 158 millions; but this is not all; for the tax muft neceffarily raise the price of all the articles which they confume; -he estimates the rife at 11 per cent. ; so that what coft them, before the tax, 833 millions 333 thousand 333 livres, will coft, after it is laid on, additionally 91,666,666 158,000,000 249,666,666 which, added to their share of the tax, viz. would make the whole of the additional burden amount to this, added to the whole of their former earnings or wages, which produced annually would make 833,333,333 1,082,999,999 and thus they would find themselves not only enabled to bear their proportion of this additional burden, without being * The feptier is a French measure containing about twelve English bufhels. + In the original we find 11 livres to fhillings: but it is evident, from cafting up the fum, that this must be an error of the prefs. deprived deprived of any one comfort that they enjoyed before, but actually to add fomething to their former ftock, as appears from the following statement: The total produce of the land amounted, before the tax, as has been already observed, to A rife of 11 per cent. on it, amounting to would make the whole from which deduct the fum which the farmers muft pay either to or in confequence of the tax, viz. there will remain in their pockets Before the tax, they had 2,500,000,000 275,000,000 2,775,000,000 The difference therefore in their favour will be 25,333,335 that is to fay, fomething more than 10 per cent.of which they must pay about one half to those who may be supposed to have lent them the 249,666,666 which the rife of the price of labour would oblige them to advance to their labourers, and which advance could not be withholden from them confiftently with juftice any more than with found policy; it being a truth, as our author contends, that the confumption of the articles which they ufe cannot be diminished, without occafioning a proportional diminution in the reproduction, and confequently a lofs to the community at large. After having repelled a great variety of objections to the tax, which are too long to be detailed, and cannot well be abridged, (two only excepted, which we shall mention prefently,) the Marquis fhews that, by being made payable at the mill where and when the corn was ground, it would not only be eafily collected, and at very little expence, but would also be attended with this advantage, that it might be paid every week, and fo be conftantly arriving at the exchequer to answer the public exigencies. It would alfo be extremely beneficial in this refpect, that, though producing the largest revenue ever raised in any part of the world on any one article, it would fall lightly on individuals; for a man poffeffing 100 thousand livres a year would not have to pay more towards it than 1500 livres; a man who had 20,000 not more than 300; and a man who had 1000 only 15; it would not increase the price of articles produced by manufactures and agriculture more than one and a belf per cent. and the burden of this increase would not fall on ngle working man in the community. We now come to the two objections to which we have just auded; and which cannot but have weight in a commercial country. One is, that the tax would raife the price of labour, and confequently injure the export trade, by making our manu factures factures too dear for those who could afford to purchase them at their former value. The other, that a diminution of the balance of trade, without which (it is thought) a commercial nation could not thrive, would be a neceffary confequence of a contraction of our exports. To the former, the author's answer is, that the price of labour has within the prefent century been raised from 12 to 15 per cent. in England, and yet, so far from having experienced any falling off in her export trade, she has had the fatisfaction of feeing it trebled during that period. The other objection he meets in the following manner: Nothing can be more capable of making a man implicitly follow an opinion adopted in France than that he fhould fee it eftablished in England, and refpected throughout the reft of Europe, though it were obvious that it was the intereft of the rest of Europe to take the moft vigorous fteps to prevent itself from being involved in the fatal confequences of fuch an opinion if well founded, or to overturn and deftroy it, if not eftablished on an uninterrupted series of undifputed facts.-I will confine myfelf here to fome obfervations on these undifputed facts-from which I think an inference may be drawn diametrically oppofite to this generally received opinion. England, it is faid, has an annual balance in her favour, of 4 millions fterling; and France of 70 millions of livres, or about 3 millions fterl.; confequently, there must be every year a balance of 7 millions to fatisfy the voracity of these two monfters. Now it must be obferved that it was a common faying in France that the fall of that kingdom would begin, when its balance of 70 millions of livres fhould begin to decline; and that it was a generally received opinion in England that, when her balance fhould fink to between 2 and 3 millions fterling, fhe muft neceffarily become bankrupt. It must also be obferved that the annual importation of gold and filver from America (almoft the only country from which thefe precious metals are drawn,) does not exceed, if it amounts to, 6 millions fterling of this fum we may fuppofe the Spaniards and Portuguese, who extract it from their mines in America, keep a fixth for their own wants. The rest of Europe must contrive as well as it can to club or make up the two millions fterling, which would obviously be wanting to complete the annual balance required by the voracity of England and France. Where does Europe find them? where has the found them even for the last twenty years, not to go farther back? I am fure I cannot tell: but you will find the pretenfions and wants of France, on this head, made out and established in M. Necker's justly esteemed work on the finances of that kingdom; and the very exact statements made by Sir Charles Whitworth of all the balances of England with the rest of Europe, particularly from 1752 to 1773, fhew an annual balance in favour of England amounting to 4,180,000l. fterling. You will farther obferve, from these statements, that her trade with Pruffia is the only one in Europe that does not yield a balance in her favour; and that there is not one other country in Europe to which he does not export three times the quantity of goods which fhe exported at the beginning of the century; and that the imports in precifely the fame proportion from every state in Europe with which the has any dealings, France only excepted, which lies at her door. Hence it follows that, if England has in the space of a century trebled her commerce, the other countries with which the trades have trebled the means by which they feed the trade that they carry on with her. If thefe obfervations be founded in fact, it unquestionably follows alfo, that these countries must have been gainers as well as England, or they would not have continued and even extended their commercial dealings with her. Thirty years ago, the fpecie in circulation in England amounted to at least 25 millions fterl.: if to thefe we were to add 4 millions 180 thousand pounds a-year for thirty years, which she is fuppofed to clear annually by her balance, fhe ought to have now in specie full 150 millions fterling; whereas in point of fact he has not at the very most above 30 millions. Now if England and France have really received yearly 7 millions fterling from Spain, Portugal, and other countries, of which these two nations pretend they have annually stripped the rest of Europe, as the rest of Europe thinks it really has been ftripped of it, it is evident that the money has only paffed and repaffed through their hands to the places in which it was wanted, leaving every where behind it, to those who carry on this trade, the profit, as just as it is neceffary, which they ought to find in it.' We cannot follow our author in his detail of the manner by which he explains this mystery of the balance of trade; we refer our readers to the work itself, p. 262, &c. We would here clofe our account of this elaborate performance, if we did not think it of importance to take some notice of the laft chapter; in which the author fpeaks of the present war, and urges the ftrongest reafons to perfuade the allied powers, if they wish well to themfelves, to refolve to profecute it with redoubled vigour. This seems, indeed, to be conceived in the true spirit of a French emigrant, against which we ought ever to be on our guard, even when manifefted by the very beft characters among them ;-in the number of whom we strongly incline to rank the Marquis DE CASAUX. Speaking of the objects of former wars and of the prefent, he thus emphatically expreffes himself: In the wars to which I have alluded, and which, with their fufpenfions and interruptions, were lengthened out to a period of ten centuries, the champions fought for the honour and advantage of reigning over laborious, brave, and wealthy men but in our days it is a monstrous convention that carries on the war, a convention that has promifed to over run all Europe, and leave it inhabited only by villains, and fpiritlefs wretches, and every where to mark its proAPP. REV. VOL. XVI. M m grefs grefs by heaps of ruins. Its conduct wherever it has been able to get a footing, or even to penetrate for a few moments, has proved that it meant to leave behind it only fuch ruins as might be neceffary to inform pofterity that, at the clofe of the 18th century, Europe was inhabited by ten polifhed, induftrious, rich, and powerful nations; but that they were not able to maintain their ground for more than a fmall number of years, after a monstrous convention had signified to them an order to disappear and return to the chaos, into which it was refolved once more to plunge fociety *. It would feem as if Europe were beginning to fufpe&t the poffibility of this dreadful catastrophe; and if she has, throughout her whole extent, been fufficiently chaftened courageously to adopt all the means capable of warding off fuch a calamity not only for the prefent, but for ever, it appears as if, at least in the fouthern parts of this quarter of the globe, the nations were beginning to feel the neceffity of fufpending and fincerely adjourning all private projects of conquest and dominion,' (has the horrid cafe of Poland efcaped our author's attention?) when her ftates are obviously reduced to the neceffity of fighting even for mere existence, when it is evident that they must either ceafe to exif, or immediately deftroy this monftrous convention, which promifes to deftroy every thing that it cannot throw into confufion ; and which would not renounce for the prefent fo atrocious a project, if it were not for the purpose of making greater preparations for it, and rendering the fuccefs more certain. Perhaps England was the first to open her eyes, and difcover the neceffity of this ftrange alternative. She might, it may be faid, have prevented this neceffity, by offering her mediation at the moment in which the then rulers (who were for war, only that they might by means of it destroy royalty in France, and afterwards make ufe of France as an inftrument for effacing even the name of King from the rest of Europe,) forced the unfortunate Louis XVI. to declare war. At that moment, no doubt, the internal movements of the kingdom, the refult of the real fentiments of the people, which revolutionary armies that did not yet exist could not then have ftified, would have fhewn to the handful of men of blood that forced from him that fatal declaration, the weight of fo powerful a mediation as that of England, who alone poffeffed the means of moving the rest of Europe, and who might nevertheless offer to France, as well as to Auftria and Pruffia, fuch explanations as fould fatisfy them, and fuch propofitions as might reconcile all parties.-If England has loft this occafion of immortalizing herself in the nobleft way; if she has liftened perhaps too much to the voice of a refentment, natural enough it is true, but the confequences of which are still far from being fettled, and the effects of which it be-comes daily more and more difficult to forefee or to calculate; fhew me the power in Europe, whofe views have been fo juft, whofe intentions fo pure, whofe conduct fo free and open, whofe meafures fo vigorous, and at the fame time fo wife, as that it might venture to It should not be forgotten that the Marquis wrote this work while terror, destruction, and barbarity, formed the fyftem of the temporary rulers in France. reproach |