I take it, that whoever considers any man's expenditure of his income,
old or new, (I speak of certain classes in life,) will find a full third
of it to go in taxes, direct or indirect. If so, this new-created income
of two millions will probably furnish 665,000_l._ (I avoid broken
numbers) towards the payment of its own interest, or to the sinking of
its own capital. So it is with the whole of the public debt. Suppose it
any given sum, it is a fallacious estimate of the affairs of a nation to
consider it as a mere burden. To a degree it is so without question, but
not wholly so, nor anything like it. If the income from the interest be
spent, the above proportion returns again into the public stock;
insomuch that, taking the interest of the whole debt to be twelve
million three hundred thousand pound, (it is something more,) not less
than a sum of four million one hundred thousand pound comes back again
to the public through the channel of imposition. If the whole or any
part of that income be saved, so much new capital is generated,--the
infallible operation of which is to lower the value of money, and
consequently to conduce towards the improvement of public credit.
I take the expenditure of the _capitalist_, not the value of the
capital, as my standard; because it is the standard upon which, amongst
us, property, as an object of taxation, is rated. In this country, land
and offices only excepted, we raise no faculty tax.
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