Lowe on the State of England. 
. Brought forward, £510,139,600 
MRD ey 2 Ps ES ADO % 
43,246,00 
Wik oy. 47,968,000 
1892. 49,739,000 
IBIS 3 o% i Se . 64,872,000 
Bae Stas . 60,239,000 
1815 . . 48,282,000 
Total, nearly . . £800,000,000 
EFFECT OF TAXATION ON PRICES. 
The result, or, to speak more properly, 
the avowed tendency of most taxes, is a 
direct augmentation of price. Taxes on 
commodities are always imposed on the 
calculation of being paid by the consumer; 
the supply of any article, whethera luxury, 
such as wine and sugar, or a necessary of 
life, like corn, Salt, leather, being presumed 
to be inproportion to the effectual demand, 
and the tax intended not asa burden on 
the producer or vender, but as an addition 
to the price paid by the consumer.+ At 
times, however, from the market being 
overstocked, no addition takes place; the 
price continues as low as before the impo- 
sition of the duty, and the new burden falls 
on the producer or seller. Such was long 
the case of our West India sugar planters 
during the war; such is, in a great mea- 
sure, their case at present; it is the case 
also of a far more numerous class, our far- 
mers, who, in 1822, as in 1815, are to be 
considered as paying their taxes out of 
their capital. 
LAND AND HOUSES. 
. The farm which, in 1792, let for 170/., 
which, in 1803, afforded a rental of 240/., 
and in 1813, of 320/., has now reverted 
or must ere long, revert to 240/. 
The house which, in 1792, let for 50/., 
in 1806, for 65/., and in the latter years 
of the war, for 70/. (the rise being less 
great in houses than in land), has now re- 
verted to a rent of 65/, Its value as a 
purchase, originally 1,000/., raised towards 
the middle of our long contest, to 1,300/., 
and eventually to.1,400/, or 1,500/, is 
now brought back, or likely to be soon 
brought back, to 1,200/.,a sua which, in 
the scale of general expenditure, is or will 
soon be equal to the 1,000/. of 1792. 
MONEY PROPERTY. 
Here avery different scene opens. A 
sum lent on mortgage, which, for facility 
in calculation, we shall suppose to have 
been 3,200/., yielded throughout the war 
a regular 5 per cent, of interest, but. the 
+ Governed always by the demand be- 
ing. greater than the supply, which was an 
effect of loaus, not necessarily of taxcs.— 
Ep. 
MontuLy Mac.—No, 337. 
617 
160/. received from it, became, towards 
the middle of the war, equivalent to only . 
130/., and towards its close, to little more 
than 100/, This formed a heavy reduc- 
tion; but it is fit to add, that the conti- 
nuance of peace after 1792 would have 
roduced a reduction of a different kind, 
(a the rate of interest to 4, 32, and 
eventually, perhaps, to 3 per cent. Since 
1814, the re-action in the value of money 
has rendered the 160/. of interest equiva- 
lent to more than 130/. of the money of 
-1792. To what proportion of the national: 
income does this calculation apply, or, m 
other words, what is the amount of fixed 
annuities in the country, excluding wages, 
salaries, stipends, and all payments which 
may vary from year to year? We are 
inclined to compute this amount at 
50,000,0002. annually, a sum which is at 
present, and was during a great part of the 
war, nearly one-fourth of our total na- 
tional income. 
PRICES ON THE CONTINENT. 
In how far, in the present age, have the 
other countries of Europe participated. in- 
those fluctuations of money which among 
us have reached so extraordinary a length > 
This question is of no easy solution, as welk 
from want of documents in countries which 
had then no representative assembly, as 
from a depreciated paper having been cur- 
rent in almost every part of Europe. 
France, the only state that has equalled us 
in the duration of her wars, exhibits a re- 
markable contrast to us in the extent of her 
financial burdens. Her revenue, amount- 
ing in the beginning of the Revolution to 
about twenty-two millions, sterling, was 
never increased by more than the half of 
that sum; while our sixteen millions of 
1792 became forty-five millions in 1804; 
sixty millions in 1808, and nearly seventy 
millions in 1814. In fact, in» the early 
part of the revolutionary war, the collec- 
tion of revenue in France was considerahly 
under twenty mullions; the wants of go- 
vernment having been supplied by the 
emission of assignats during four years of 
emergency, (1792-3-4-5) and afterwards 
in a considerable degree, by contributions 
from conquered territories. The amount 
emitted in the form of assignats admits of 
no definite calculation, the value of that 
government paper having fallen rapidly, 
and having been at last reduced toa nul- 
lity. But if we compute at two hundred 
millions sterling the amount of public sa- 
crifice from the assignats, and if we add 
for the bankruptcy committed in regard to 
two-thirds of the public debt, the forced 
loan of 1797, and the augmented taxation 
of the latter years of Bonaparte, two hun- 
4K dred. 
